IN HER OWN way Aradna had been born to war. To be a follower of war, that is. One of the ragged many who trailed behind the machinery of carnage, scavenging a life from dead bodies and burning villages and the strewn chaos of spent battlefields. She never knew her mother, but her father had been almost good to her. With the help of a single mule, he had driven a cart laden with found objects for sale, trinkets so inconsequential that soldiers in the passion of battle failed to strip them from the bodies of the slain: silver rings, shot pellets for the slingers, sandals, strips of leather, healing ointments, talismans from various countries, figures of gods significant only to the faithful of certain sects. He was a gruff man, a Greek, big-shouldered and well known among the horde. He was famous for having punched a Bythian mercenary so hard during an argument that the man was left literally speechless – he who had been a loud-mouthed creature could no longer form words with his unwieldly tongue. Aradna’s father might have been a warrior in his own right, but he chose to live by exploiting other men’s follies, not joining them.
While he lived, Aradna’s childhood was one of relative safety. He might not have known kindness and how to show it, but in his way he was soft on her. He spoke quietly at night, told her of her mother, of the small village they had fled from years ago, of the great wrong done to them that pushed them from the island he loved dearly and so wanted to return to. All this wandering was nothing, he told her. These were simply the trials he must face as an actor in the drama that was his life. He wanted only to return to Greece. He prayed daily that the writer of his story would provide the means, would make his tale a saga but not a tragedy. He watched her in the morning so that sometimes she awoke to his gaze above her and was comforted by it.
He was taken by an illness that came upon him quickly and simply killed him. She was twelve and was first raped that evening by the very man who had helped her bury him, her father’s friend of many years. It was payment, the man said, and if so the bill was a large one, for he claimed her as his own and travelled with her tied to the back of the cart that had been her father’s. He took her nightly, calling out another woman’s name as he came and always angry with her afterwards. She did not mourn when he died, taken slowly by a pinprick wound that started in his foot and ate up his leg to the centre of him.
She was in farm country south of Castulo and found temporary peace in a village. She worked for an elderly man who loved to look at her but could do no more. He spoke to her as he said he could not to his own daughters. It was hard work, farming, but a far cry from the life she had thus far lived. She felt in the daily work some distant familiarity, an ancestral memory. She might have stayed on there after the old man’s death but his daughters ran her from the property, fearful that their husbands would be drawn to her. She might have asked those two to think of her as a sister but she knew they could not. They were not kin, and they saw nothing in her except their own lacks.
She was fourteen then and became a scavenger once more. She left childhood behind and quickly grew hard in her woman’s body. She became lean with muscle, and thick-skinned. Her mind had a sharpness of purpose that never rested, for neither did the carnivores sniffing round her. She was not the only female on the battlefields, but her face was prettier than most and her slim, androgynous form attracted men’s stares. Her eyes were the colour and quality of opal. Set against her tanned skin and even features they were two curses from behind which she viewed the world.
She walked from Gades to the Tagus and traversed the spine of the Silver Mountains and the whole coastline of Iberia as far as New Carthage. She was present at the fall of Arbocala and witnessed first-hand the cruel power of the Carthaginians. Everywhere she found men the same, their desires as predictable as her need to repel them. They came at her in the night and during the day and during sunrise and dusk: she fought them equally. She permanently damaged one man’s sight by dragging a jagged fingernail across his eye; another she stabbed in the abdomen with a spearhead; still another she bit in the cheek and half pulled the flesh away. For this last she was beaten insensible and raped with a retributory violence.
But for all these trials she was not defeated but tempered, fired to new strength. She was the victim, yes, but she saw within men’s behaviour a frailty that made them weak. Men might have been the stronger sex, but when they were filled with lust they were the more vulnerable, too. To sate themselves they must bear their naked, upraised clubs before them. Perhaps this was the final thing that defeated many women, seeing that member engorged, one-eyed and hooded like the evil serpent that it was. She had this thought during her waking hours but it came to her again while dreaming. A dead woman spoke to her and said that serpents – no matter how venomous – could be squashed beneath a well-placed heel.
When Aradna joined the train behind Hannibal’s army she did so with little interest in the war’s outcome. She walked behind the men but not out of devotion to them. This was simply the next campaign: either side might provide her the things she sought. She kept a treasure in a bag round her neck. She wore it like a talisman, and indeed it did contain within it the bones of an eagle taken from the egg, cloves of garlic often replaced to keep the scent strong, a single lock of hair said to have been snipped from Clytemnestra’s murdered body so many years before, a tiny statue of Artemis carved from whalebone. But also within were several gold coins, the beginning, she hoped, of the small fortune she would need to buy herself a plot of land in that faraway country she had never seen but from which she had sprung. She followed Hannibal’s army, but she was concerned with no destiny save her own.
Publius Scipio was much like any other young noble at the start of the war with Hannibal. He was of medium build, not bulky of musculature, but well sculpted and fit from training. His face was cut close to the bones that formed it, topped with light brown hair. Indeed, his friends often joked with him that his profile was fine enough to be minted on a coin, though why anybody would want to do that none of them could imagine. His father had already arranged for his marriage to the daughter of a prominent senator, Aemilius Paullus, a sure sign that his future shone brightly. He had every intention of honouring the distinguished family from which he sprang – through service in the Senate, through the acquisition and generous sharing of wealth, through noble comportment, and through distinguished conduct in war. He was, considering all this, quite receptive to the news of a coming conflict with Carthage. He had been schooled since boyhood that only through arduous struggle could a man truly make a name for himself. Struggle, therefore, was something to be sought out.
Publius believed – as much as is possible in a vibrant young man sniffing out his own view of the world – that his father was superior to other men in all matters of importance. Cornelius Scipio had been elected consul in a moment when the Roman Senate anticipated war. Thereby the people themselves had demonstrated their confidence in him. When the elder Scipio laid out his plans for a two-pronged attack – himself sailing for Iberia while the other consul, Sempronius Longus, aimed at Carthage itself – the young soldier believed it could not fail. Even when the threatened uprising among the Boii and Insubres detained them in the region of the Padus, Publius did not doubt that the delay was of little significance. The barbarians’ pretensions needed to be checked. All knew that not that far back in the history of Rome the likes of them had sacked the city itself. But those were different days. A different Rome. And the Gauls needed to be reminded of it by occasional demonstrations of force.
They burned villages and seized property, fought skirmishes with the wild creatures, and watched dry-eyed as the particularly recalcitrant hung to their suffocating deaths upon wooden crosses. They suffered some casualties, felt seething animosity behind all those blue eyes, but never truly met the anticipated armed, organized resistance. The younger Scipio was later to recall that a Gallic woman he bedded for a casual evening’s entertainment had uttered Hannibal’s name as she crept from his tent. This made little sense at the time and was soon forgotten, only to be remembered later with the significance of a curse belatedly understood.
Confident that the would-be rebellion had been quashed before it began, Cornelius and his legions sailed for Massilia, on the coast just west of the Alps. The consul was fighting with the latter stages of a cold, felt feverish, and complained that his feet had never recovered from the rot of a wet spring. He sent his son to meet in council with the city’s magistrates, and then retired to the comfort of his chambers. It was there that Publius found him that evening, relaxing in his brother’s company.
Cornelius sat on a low couch, his toga drawn up high on his thighs, bare legs propped up on a wooden stool. Even in repose the consul had about him an air of authority. He was lean, his face the model for his son’s sculpted features. A teenage boy knelt before him, with one of the man’s feet clasped in both hands. The young man held the foot just before his face, as if smelling it. His energy was concentrated in his fingers, in the balls of his thumb and the kneading they were administering to the consul’s insole and toe pad.
Cornelius, noticing his son, said, ‘Do not think me turning into some vile old soldier. These feet will be the death of me. They were spoiled in years past, and spring campaigns are ill to them. This boy has fine hands and he soothes them. I take some pleasure in it, though I am not yet a Greek.’
Publius nodded a greeting at his uncle, who stood near the far wall, contemplating the world through a tiny window, holding a goblet of wine just under his nose. Gnaeus was of medium height, but thick in the legs and torso, with long, powerful arms some compared to a blacksmith’s. He bore little resemblance to his elder brother except in speech: the brothers’ voices were nearly identical even to ears accustomed to them both.
‘I’ve nothing ill to say against Greeks,’ Publius said.
‘That is true. I forget you associate with a fair number of them when at leisure. Perhaps it is your decency we should be concerned with. You bring me news, don’t you?’
‘I bring you a report,’ Publius said. ‘It’s news if it is reliable, but that I’m not sure of. Apparently some of the Volcae claim that Hannibal has crossed the Pyrenees and is approaching the Rhône.’
Gnaeus jerked his head towards his nephew, spilling a few drops of wine on his toga. ‘That can’t be!’
Cornelius received the news more calmly, with little expression save for the sceptical wrinkling of his lips. ‘What does Marius make of this claim?’
‘The governor credits it. He heard this from a trusted informer, with the blessing of tribal leaders of importance. He says they have no reason to lead us astray. Since he’s been posted in Massilia, they have caused no real trouble. And the Volcae seem to need no convincing of Hannibal’s threat. They have their own reasons to hate Carthage, it seems. Also, this is in keeping with reports from Catalonia.’
‘Catalonia is not the Rhône valley,’ Gnaeus said. ‘How is this in keeping with such reports?’
‘It’s possible, I mean. He may have been able to cross the Pyrenees—’
‘True enough,’ Cornelius said, ‘but why would he? Our spies have confirmed that he means to fight within Iberia, where he is strong. I understood him to have planned an Iberian war in detail. Why change his plans now?’
‘Perhaps our spies were not worth the gold we paid them,’ Gnaeus said.
Cornelius tugged his foot away from the servant, who parted his hands and knelt immobile, awaiting instruction. The consul set his feet on the ground and pushed himself upright. He was a tall man among Romans, a brow’s height above his son, not an old man although in the later years of his military service. Though he was no longer in his physical prime one could forget this at moments when he gathered his stature round him. He did so just then, shooing the servant away and placing an arm on his son’s shoulder to walk him towards Gnaeus.
‘Why would the brute cross the Pyrenees?’ Cornelius asked again. ‘Easy enough to believe he would make a grab for all of Iberia up to the Pyrenees, but into the land of the Volcae? Too much at once, and too close to our interests. He would have to know that we would not allow it. Why stretch himself so when he knows we are preparing to attack him? Sempronius queried me in writing whether I feared Hannibal intended to cross the Alps. The idea gave me pause, but I had to dismiss it. It would be absurd, and – impetuous though Barcas are – Hannibal is no madman. So what then . . .?’
The consul let the question hang. Some might have found it an invitation to answer, but Publius knew it was not meant for him. He took a goblet of wine, swirled it beneath his nose, and awaited the continuation of his father’s musings.
‘Perhaps it is a ruse,’ Gnaeus offered.
Cornelius tipped a few droplets into his brother’s goblet, drank a long draught from his own, and then nodded agreement. ‘It may well be a trick to keep us occupied here instead of focused on a direct attack on New Carthage. He knows he overstepped himself, but he is bold. He has decided to pull back by pushing forward, if you understand me. If he keeps our attention here, he may yet save his city. He might, at the end of the year, withdraw into Iberia and so end the year retreating, but with more gained than lost. This is why I am still resolved to press on into Iberia. Gnaeus will land at Emporiae to prepare the way. I’ll follow with the bulk of the army. Let Hannibal get word that his own city is besieged, and that Sempronius is sailing for his homeland. He will see then that ruses are nothing against determined might. Don’t you agree?’
Publius nodded, but he had another thought and knew he had finally been given leave to speak. ‘But – for the sake of thoroughness – what if he is mad?’
‘What?’
‘What if his target is Rome?’
Cornelius studied his son a moment, head cocked, squinting, as if he was not sure he recognized the young man. ‘For the sake of thoroughness . . . If Italy is his target he must surely stick near the coast and confront us. He would not attempt the inland mountains. The casualties he would suffer would make that a daily battle in and of itself. He might have overreaching hubris, but still he would not waste his army fighting snow and ice and Gauls. If he reached Italy at all it would be as a band of starving beggars. No, if he wants Rome he must first come through us, and I would welcome such a meeting.’
His tone, once more, suggested that further discussion was not an option. He refilled Publius’ goblet and offered it to him. He said, ‘All considered, I think we can continue our preparations with little fear.’
None could call the journey to the Rhône uneventful for the Carthaginians. They expanded their dominion to the farthest extent it had ever known, through strong-worded negotiation, at times through open war or siege or ambush. Hannibal knew he must keep control of the lands between him and New Carthage. The army travelled in three war columns, separated by miles, each with its own trials to face and each led by a Barca. They sent before them emissaries of peace, but it was hard for any people to look upon this massed power and not grasp for sword or spear. The small, sturdy Balearic Islanders marched in the fore, their slings held at the ready, able in an instant to send a stone whirling through the air at blinding speed; beside them strode the strange grey beasts ridden by men whose nation could only be guessed at. The grey beasts were big-eared and massive, with a nose as flexible and strong as any limb. Behind them came rank after rank of soldiers, marching in their various companies and in tribal groups and followed by horsemen; in the wake of it all, a baggage train that fed the beast of war. Carthage’s army churned the spring ground into a wide wasteland. The land to either side of them was stripped clean as if by a swarm of locusts, and behind them came wolves and foxes, buzzards and ravens and swarms of flies.
They came to an agreement to pass through the territory of the Ruscino, but there were other tribes and factions of tribes to contend with. No leader could govern each and every member of a people. Although no Carthaginian head rested easy at night, towards the end of the summer they could claim a tenuous dominion over all of Catalonia. No Roman legion had appeared on the horizon, so Hannibal left Hanno in command of the tribes washing right up to the foothills of the Pyrenees. He then marched the army over the mountains and came down into the plain leading towards the Rhône.
At that river, the Volcae massed to make their stand. Gaining the west bank, Hannibal got his first glimpse of the wild creatures whom Monomachus had barely escaped on his earlier expedition. They were long-haired and half clothed, pale as pine flesh, some painted in shades of blue and green. Their calls carried across the flat, slick expanse of steady current, taunts spoken in the strangest gibberish, a guttural dialect totally foreign to an African’s ear. And yet the meaning behind the words was clear enough when twinned with their gestures. They gesticulated with their arms and fingers, exposed their buttocks and grabbed at their crotches, stuck out their tongues and waved their long swords in the air above them. Clearly, they were not a people open to negotiation.
Mago, standing beside his brother, said, ‘Those people are out of their minds.’
Hannibal took it all in with an impassive face. ‘Insane or no,’ he said, ‘they are in our way.’
And so he constructed a plan to remove them. To fulfil it, Mago marched out just after dark, a contingent of the Sacred Band close round him. Behind them came the bulk of the war party, Iberians chosen for their comfort in the water, several with Gallic horns tied to their backs and protruding above them as if long-necked birds were growing out of their flesh. They followed the lead of two Gallic guides, who risked their lives and their families’ freedom if they led the soldiers astray. They progressed not in ordered ranks but weaving through the trees, ducking low branches and jumping across creek beds, into shadow and out. They followed the Rhône for some time. Then they left it to climb into a hilly area, from which they sometimes caught glimpses of the distant river, a black snake across the landscape, save where the light of the moon touched upon it in gleaming silver. They camped for the day in a high pine wood, careful to move little and to keep fires small. Mago found the bedding of needles almost luxurious. He pinched the needles between his forefinger and thumb and snapped them, one after another, for some time. There was something comforting in the action.
When they dropped down to the river again the next evening, the guides led them to the area they wished for. It was as promised: a tree-covered island split the current. The riverbed out to it was shallow enough for the men to wade most of the distance across and lose their footing for only a few moments, though frantic ones for those who could not swim. Mago’s heart pounded in his chest the moment his feet slipped free of the bottom. His chin dipped under the water. He spat and gagged and tilted his head so far back that he looked straight up at the sky and felt it moving above him and had the momentary sensation that each pinprick of light was an eye looking down on him. But then his foot brushed a stone. One, then another, then a large one that clipped both his legs and sent him tumbling. After that it grew shallower. He made it to the island in no worse shape than the others.
But that was only half the crossing; the far side was deeper and swifter. They set to work hewing pines, chopping the branches from them, and lashing them together into rafts. It was hard work in only the moonlight, but they completed it before the moon dipped and cast them into deeper darkness. They pushed off onto the swaying, hard-to-steer craft, paddling towards the dark woodland on the far bank.
They were barely ashore when the light of day grew on them. They pulled the rafts up into the trees and gathered together in a narrow valley to warm themselves before fires and be fed. Mago posted guards, but most of the men spent the day at rest, falling asleep as they hit the ground. The Barca was not so quick to fall into slumber. He lay staring up at the thick canopy of trees above them, the myriad branches layering and crosshatching across one another. His eyes sought out patterns in the lines and shadows but there was none to be found. Something in this troubled him, for it seemed that nature so rarely displayed order in the chaos of the earth. Why was this so? Why were no two branches the same, no two leaves true replicas of each other? He did sleep eventually, but it was not a restful slumber.
Few stirred until the late afternoon. Hunger awoke them and consciousness reminded them of the task before them. The third night was devoted to the march back downstream, a difficult venture as they feared being discovered. They moved with such stealth that the head of the party stumbled upon a group of deer caught unawares. The buck of the group stood at the crest of a bare hill, feeding on the low shrubs growing up in the scar of a fire a few years old. Around him were five does and two young males, all heads down and content in their night-time dining. The two Gauls spotted them first. One flung an arm out to stop the other. The sudden motion was enough in the tense night to send a shock wave back through the group and man after man froze in his tracks. This must have been a stranger sound than that of their movement, for the buck looked up, lifted his nose, and studied on the silence. He grunted a warning and bolted, leaving the does momentarily at a loss. Then they, too, found motion. They bounded up the hillside and out of view, backsides taunting in their spring, somehow deceptive as compared to the speed of the creatures. In the empty stillness after this the two Gauls looked long at each other. They began mumbling at the profundity of such a sighting and might have carried on for some time had Mago not hissed them into silence.
The trip was uneventful after that. They were in place as planned on the morning of the fourth day. Mago had the signal fire kindled and the agreed message went up into the air in billows of white smoke. Watching the plumes rise, he whispered a prayer to Baal, beseeching his attention and blessing on the venture just before him. This done, he signalled the men forward.
Though Imco Vaca knew that Mago had led a small band out on some mission, a few days before, the plan had not been explained to him. It was with considerable trepidation that he pushed off from the shore and began the crossing. The Volcae’s numbers had increased over the last few days. It was hard to count them, for they lined the shore from horizon to horizon. Many camped right on the stony edge of the river, others among the trees and into the hills behind them. When they saw that the Carthaginians were finally beginning their crossing they hooted with joy. They drummed their swords against their shields and blew on their great upcurving horns, instruments not musical at all but like the bellowing of an elk caught in a bog. They seemed to think the Carthaginians were floating to the slaughter.
During the early part of the journey, Imco would not have disputed this. He was on one of the large barges that pushed off from far upstream. He manned a pole for the first portion of the journey, heaving it up from the bottom and starting again. They tried to gain the greatest momentum they could before the river deepened, but by the time they switched to their makeshift paddles it seemed they moved more with the current than across. Nor were they alone. Spread out into the distance along the river below them were innumerable vessels of every description. Barges of full-grown trees lashed together with bark ropes, rafts that rode so low their occupants stood ankle deep in river water. A few vessels flew simple sails to aid them; some dragged behind tethered ponies. Some men even bestrode sections of log, legs in the water on either side, weapons strapped to their backs, paddling forward with their hands. Only the Iberians were truly comfortable in the water. Many of them disdained the vessels altogether. They swam with their shields snug to their chests and their clothing and gear in leather sacks upon their backs. It was a motley flotilla.
Halfway across the first of the Gallic missiles began to fall, zipping into the water with little more sound than a pebble tossed from the shore. But they were not pebbles, as the man beside Imco soon learned. The young soldier heard the man’s speech cut short. He recognized the squelching, muted thud of the impact. But he did not know where the man had been hit until he grasped him by the shoulder and yanked him round. The other had caught the arrow in his open mouth. It pinned his tongue against his palate and pierced the voice box. The man’s eyes betrayed no alarm at this, only incredulity. This must have changed with deeper realization of his situation, but Imco did not notice.
He turned away, grabbing his shield and ducking beneath it. He knew with complete certainty that joining this campaign was the biggest error of his young life. Nothing had gone right for him since the march began. The first week out, he had stepped barefoot on a fishing barb at the edge of a stream. The wound was a tiny one in the eyes of the warriors around him, but it caused him no end of pain as he marched. Dirt and grime had entered with the barb and made the whole area into a swollen pad of pus-filled agony. Somewhere before the Pyrenees, Imco had picked up an infestation of savage public lice. They terrorized his groin, biting him with such vigour that he sometimes jolted to a wincing halt in the middle of the war column.
Now he was sure his miserable life was about to end, body left floating like so much debris in the current. He imagined the ravages of nature upon his corpse, focused particularly on the genitals: a hungry turtle clamping down on his limp penis, fish nibbling the wrinkled sacs of his manhood, his anus – an area he had never allowed violation of in life – prodded by bald, long-necked buzzards. What a fool he was! He should have quit the army and sailed home to Carthage to take some pleasure in his family’s newfound wealth. He had no business in this strange land. His war successes had thus far been gifts from the gods. Now he had overreached their benevolence by thinking himself a true warrior, imagining he could march beside Hannibal on this mad mission.
Thinking thus, he was slow to notice the change in the course of events. It was only when a soldier near him prodded him with a jest about his courage that he peeped over the rim of his shield at the far shore. The Gauls were in chaos. They were shouting, but not out over the water: they were yelling to one another now. Some had their backs turned to the approaching watercraft. The rain of arrows had nearly stopped. There seemed to be a great confusion behind them, which they only increased with their clamour. The air filled with smoke, not of campfires but of destruction. And then came the horns. They were no different really from the horns the Volcae had been blowing on only moments before, but they came from the wrong direction and were blown inexpertly. They spluttered and cut off short and rose and fell in volume. Their discordance sent the Gauls into further confusion. Then Imco caught sight of them: Mago’s small band.
Mago’s force would have been hopelessly outnumbered, except that by this time the first of the watercraft were reaching the shore. A few Iberians jumped into the river, swords in hand, and lashed out. Cavalrymen mounted their horses, cut them free, and urged them through the water. Some began to hurl their javelins from the barges, catching the Gauls in the backs and flanks. The man beside Imco – not wanting to waste one of his preferred weapons – hurled an axe towards the shore. It cut an awkward, tumbling arch in the sky and hit a Gaul flat on the top of his skull. Though it did not pierce him with the blade portion at all, the impact was enough to liquefy the man’s legs and drive him to the ground. The axe thrower sent up a howl of bestial pleasure at this. The scream pulled chill bumps up across Imco’s entire body, and yet a moment later he was joining in. It was clear already that this engagement was to be a rout.
By the time Imco could see the stones in the knee-deep water where the barge grounded, he had forgotten the fear that had huddled him beneath his shield. The bloodlust on the underside of cowardice is a powerful thing. Imco felt it in the completeness of his being. He jumped ashore and his first strike was into the calf of a young man in full, frantic flight, for some reason running along the shore instead of away from it. The Gaul went down and spun round and looked up through a mass of dirty blond locks. For some reason that was not entirely clear to him, Imco aimed his next thrust directly between the man’s greyish blue eyes.
By the fifth day of the crossing the army was over, save for the elephants and their keepers. These last had been preparing since they first arrived on the banks. A few rafts had been sent into the current with single pachyderms aboard, but more than one of the beasts panicked and plunged headlong into the water. Two made their way back to the near shore; another two managed to progress all the way to the far side, the spine of their backs, the crests of their skulls, and their trunks jutting out of the water. It seemed to the watchers that the elephants had somehow found shallow portions of the riverbed just perfect for their crossing. One of the mahouts swore that the elephants had swum, and that he had known them to swim even farther in his eastern homeland, but he was shouted down as mad.
The small rafts were deemed too risky, and so they decided upon another method. Vandicar ordered the elephant handlers to build a jetty far out into the water. Beyond this they constructed rafts of stout trees, some as thick around as a man, lashed together with great quantities of rope. They shovelled earth onto the rafts and set tufts of grass atop the dirt; they even secured leafy trees in upright postures. Even greater stretches of rope were purchased from far and wide up and down the river. The ropes were tied together and secured to the rafts and rowed across to the far shore, where it took a whole corps of men to hold the rope steady against the bowed pressure of the river.
Loading the beasts onto the floating islands was no easy task. Cow elephants led the way, calmer than bulls and more inclined to faith in humans. Behind them a few bulls followed nervously, testing the ground and finding it questionable and expressing as much with loud bellows and flapping ears. Vandicar cursed them in his Indian tongue. The chief mahout seemed to have no fear of the beasts whatsoever. He smacked them on the bottoms and yanked on their tusks and even seemed to spit in their eyes when he was truly angry.
These actions went uncommented upon for a while, but then one of the young males took exception to it. He cocked his head. It was not an angry motion, but it was swift enough to catch Vandicar off guard. The elephant’s tusk nudged him in the shoulder. One of the man’s feet got tangled in the other. He reached out for support from a sapling that had no roots and therefore was no support. A moment later he landed in the river: flat-backed, arms out to either side, mouth an oval of surprise. This seemed to confirm the suspicions the young bull had. He pivoted and bolted back onto solid ground, bringing in his wake the rest of the elephants, male and female alike. When it came down to it none completely trusted the mad fellow, certainly not now that he was climbing out of the water looking much like a drenched rat.
Eventually, though, the creatures were brought across – some afloat and some swimming – and the army departed again. They kept the Rhône to their left and followed it northward. Hannibal knew that at some point it would curve up into the Alps and that in being farther from the coast they were farther from the Romans. Though he had been tempted to engage with Scipio’s legion, he preferred to gain Italian soil, then do battle in the Romans’ own country, where any victories could be quickly followed up. Also, they were nearing the greatest natural challenge of the journey. Already he sensed the growing buzz of anxiety in the army. They had put more than a normal season’s trials behind them, but it was the unknown test of stone and ice that now kept the men awake at night, murmuring round the campfires. Hannibal saw all this, for his eyes were quick and his fingers touched each segment of his host like those of a physician who probes a patient’s body in places far removed from the perceived point of illness.
Thus it was no oversight but a conscious decision not to enforce his expulsion of the camp followers. It would have been hard to implement the order in any event, but also Hannibal knew that a portion of his fighting men would slip away with the expelled. Among them a few of the officers hid slaves and concubines. Even some of the paid foot soldiers employed the followers, to carry out their foraging duties, to secure food and comforts. Many, of course, answered sexual needs. Men in a conquering force are rarely without some spoils, coins or weapons or jewellery; the camp followers provided entertainments on which to spend these trinkets. A few among the Libyan veterans had acquired slaves from among the Gauls. As Hannibal knew these men took seriously their right to the spoils of war, he said nothing about this. Perhaps, also, even the many with no direct stake in the camp followers were encouraged by the normality they suggested. If women could journey into these wildlands, along with thin-armed children and men older than battle age and even goats and pigs . . . then surely men in the prime of health were suited to it. Hannibal knew this line of thinking and allowed it for the time being, though he also knew it for a delusion. None but the strongest had any true place in this venture.
He was surprised, in fact, that the non-combatants held on as well as they did. The marching had never been easy, and now they were crossing territory with no roads worthy of the name. They forced their way through forest and over ridges and across rivers with all the order they could muster in the broken terrain. And this was not much. It was not winter yet, but already the chill hours just before dawn were hard on those from warm climes. Increasingly, they awoke to damp mornings and a low mist that was cool to the touch and hung among them a little longer each day. Stepping out of his tent one hushed morning, Hannibal looked over a camp dusted with frost, sparkling in the pure, early light. The thin threads of ice melted quickly, but all the army recognized them as harbingers of the coming season.
Hannibal paused the march long enough in the region of the Cavares to hear a dispute between two brothers, each of whom laid claim to the chieftaincy of their clan. Occupied with their own turmoil, they showed the Carthaginians no hostility. Instead, they asked for Hannibal – as a foreigner with no personal stake in the affair – to judge. They agreed that they would honour his decision. Hannibal wasted no time. He heard them out and promptly deduced that the matter was one of the younger brother’s might overthrowing the elder’s right. He sided with the elder brother, as age is the determining factor in such matters. In pronouncing his decision, he cited the precedent of thousands of years of history.
The Carthaginians marched out with no inkling of whether the decision would hold, but acting as arbitrator had served their cause well enough. The older brother provisioned the army handsomely from their autumn supplies. He sent them off with an escort force that flanked them through a rolling landscape that began to give way to ever higher vistas, all the way into the foothills of the Alps.
The Cavares turned back at the Druentia River, a vicious, multi-channelled torrent, rock-strewn and swirling. It was a nasty, frigid confusion and an ordeal to cross. It was now – as they were left friendless at the foot of the mountains, bunched up against the banks of these spiteful waters – that the men’s grumbling grew truly audible. None carried his complaints directly to the commander, but Hannibal heard enough through his generals. The men wondered whether this mountain crossing was truly possible, especially so late in the season. Did the commander not see, as they did, the decrepit huts of the straw-haired peasants? The shrivelled cattle, the sheep shivering with cold, rivers tumbling and frothing? This was no land for civilized men. Did Hannibal wish to be famous for marching an entire army up into white oblivion? Delegations of soldiers proposed new plans to their officers: they should winter where they were; they should attack Massilia; they should retreat to Iberia with the considerable booty of the long campaign.
Hannibal heard all these complaints but answered them, for the time being, with silence. He was personally among the first to succeed in crossing the Druentia, visible to many as he balanced on the slippery back of a hewn pine. He wrenched his way through the branches, jumped from the trunk to a boulder, and then dived, flat-bellied, into a stretch of moving water. He finally emerged on the other side, dripping and frigid. He looked back at the waiting army with an accusation etched in his stare. The others, grumbling, could not help but follow his example.
Soon after, a delegation arrived from the tribe into whose lands they were about to enter, the Allobroges. It was a small group, five elders, each with a few warriors in support of him. Monomachus – trusting no people as little as he did Gauls – escorted them into camp personally, his hand-picked corps flanking the party, strong-armed Libyans who shared their general’s lust for carnage. Hannibal granted the Allobroges an audience before his tent. He sat on the plain three-legged stool he always brought with him on campaign. It had been his father’s, as he explained to the delegates through his translators. After exchanging the customary pleasantries and accepting the gifts the Gauls offered – most notably, the enormous gilded skull of a stag – he asked them their business.
The leader of the delegation, Visotrex, stepped forward to speak for them. A screen of unkempt hair hid his face; the dull silver strands must have once been blond. His words came out with a rasping deepness that made them completely beyond Hannibal’s comprehension, so that for once he had to rely entirely on his translator. Visotrex claimed that his tribe had heard all they needed to of Hannibal and the powerful army he led; they had no wish to clash in arms. He came to offer free passage through their lands, guides even, for the routes were difficult and only a local’s knowledge would see them through without grave loss.
Hannibal asked the man to pull his hair back from his face. Visotrex did so. His visage was one of caved depressions, his eyes so deep-set they huddled in shadow, his cheeks receding beneath his facial bones, his mouth a pucker sucked back against his teeth. There was a growth on his neck that might have accounted for the strange constriction of his speech; it bulged as if the man had swallowed a lime whole and carried it stuffed to one side of his throat. For all this, the Gaul’s face was unreadable, a fact that Hannibal noted well.
‘You speak for all your people in making this offer?’
Visotrex said that he did, looking to his companions for verification. They nodded and spoke in their tongue until Hannibal waved them to silence.
‘And are you a chieftain, or simply a messenger?’
The Gaul said that he was a chieftain, as his father before him had been, and that his son would lead his people after his death. Saying this, Visotrex indicated the young man standing behind his left shoulder. Hannibal took him in. He was a head taller than his father, wide-shouldered, with little in his well-formed face to connect him with his sire.
‘This one is your son?’ Hannibal asked. ‘He looks to be blessed by the gods.’
Visotrex, for the first time, showed an emotion. Pride. He said, ‘In him I see the future of my people. This is a fine thing.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Hannibal said. ‘You are wise to come to me like this, as a friend, with no suspicion, no hostility. As you have been told, we’ve no quarrel with you. Our enemy is Rome alone. But the path to them takes us through your lands. If you’re true to your word, you will find our passage no great burden. You may profit from it, in fact. I ask only that you travel at my side while we’re in your country. If I may offer you our hospitalities even as you offer us yours . . .’
Visotrex, who had followed the speech with one ear tilted towards the translator, stiffened at the last suggestion.. He seemed unsure of how to answer it, even glancing to the others for some direction. Finally, he gestured with spread hands: this was not possible. A chieftain had many duties. There were ceremonies he must preside over, so what the commander suggested could not be—
‘Then I will have your son,’ Hannibal cut in, ‘as my guest. I will show him the same courtesy I would show you. The son of the chief is the future of the people, yes? I’d be honoured to have him as my escort. Thank you for your wise counsel. My generals will speak to you of our route.’
Without awaiting a reply, Hannibal rose from his stool and retreated into his tent. He stood there a moment, just inside the flap, listening to the short, confused conversation that followed. Visotrex, once he fully understood the commander’s words, tried vainly to dispute them: a mistake had been made; for many reasons, he could not agree to leave his son. But, just as he would have instructed them, Hannibal heard Bostar and Bomilcar close down the discussion and move the party away.
As they receded, Mago and Monomachus entered the tent. Hannibal saw the questions on their faces, but spoke as if they had simply come to hear his instructions. ‘Tomorrow morning we’ll call the men to full dress and have them march in battle order,’ he said. ‘Tell them it is meant as a display and that the grander the spectacle they make, the less trouble we’ll have with these Allobroges. I will speak to the assembly then. And when we march, I want the chief’s son always at my side.’
‘You do not take the Gauls at their word, do you?’ Mago asked.
‘No, you should not,’ Monomachus said. ‘I fear there is treachery in this. I would slice the man’s throat and listen for what truth escapes without his tongue to first twist it.’
‘I hear you both,’ Hannibal said, ‘but we cannot deny that these people offer us much. Baal knows that we will all benefit if they are true to their word.’ He parted the tent flaps with the wedge of his hand and watched the receding backs of the Gauls and the escort that flanked them. ‘But do not think me misled in this. We can trust them no more than one does a captive wolf. We must hold close to our swords that which the chief values most highly. His heir; his people’s future.’
That evening Hannibal lay staring up at the fabric of the tent above him. He had to quash the whispered fears eating at his army’s morale, and he had to do so in a single speech. He would offer encouragement to his men every step of the way, but he could not be seen to be fighting a losing battle, like a mother imploring her children to behave. He tried to compose in his mind the words he would say on the morrow, but each time he began, his thoughts ordered themselves differently and looped off in varying directions. He pushed all such attempts from his head towards the middle hours of the night. He knew what his men needed to hear, what his father would have said. Best simply to stand before them and speak the truth as it came from his heart.
Having dismissed the subject, he worked his way through a catalogue of other difficulties. He searched in his short conversation with Visotrex for signs of deception. He reviewed his knowledge of the names and histories of Gallic tribes, but could retrieve no memory of having heard of Visotrex. He did believe, however, that the young man he called his son was indeed his offspring. Fatherly pride is easy to spot and hard to hide. Hannibal knew the threat implicit in his securing the young man as hostage, but whether Visotrex would eschew any treachery to preserve his son’s life he could not measure. He put the issue in its place and moved on.
He would press Visotrex for extra supplies as soon as he could: skins and furs, dried meats that were easily carried, footwear suited to ice and snow, grease for the men to cover their bare skin with. He would demand more than they could spare and therefore get somewhat more than they would like to give. He wondered if he should paint the elephants with a mixture of animal fat and herbs, as some had suggested. Vandicar was against it, but even he could not say what would become of the beasts. Hannibal needed them alive and impressive, especially for the descent into the Padus valley. His men would be weakened, half starved, frostbitten, feverish by the time they emerged. The army he would speak to tomorrow bore little resemblance to the one that would stumble into Italy in several weeks’ time, even as the current army was diminished from the one he had left Iberia with months ago. But if the elephants still walked upright they might distract the Carthaginians’ enemies from their army’s other weaknesses. Yes, they should be covered in animal fat, he decided. It could do them no harm, and he could not afford to neglect them.
He went once more through the mental map he had of the distribution of the Gallic tribes in the Padus valley, deciding on the best entry point, the preferred route by which to reach the Insubres and the Boii, the two tribes who were already in revolt against Rome. And he decided to issue a new warning to the camp followers: if they chose to follow farther, they would be tolerated only so long as they were not a burden. The first sign of delay or weakness and they would be despatched and left unburied, unburned, unmourned, food for wolves. They should abandon this journey and make their way home as well as they could. He would say this, but he already knew it was too late. Cut off from the army, the camp followers would be pounced upon by marauding Gauls before an hour had passed. This issue decided, he went through others yet waiting for his attention. The list was long. Only when he felt sleep truly weighing heavy on his lids did he let his mind wander to Imilce, and that only for a few moments. More was hard to bear.
The next morning Hannibal stood on a rise before the gathering army. The ground was nowhere truly flat, but on the rolling, tree-dotted landscape the ranks of soldiers before him seemed to blanket all the habitable earth. Behind him, a slab of grey granite jutted up from the trees and stretched towards the sky – impressive, yes, but also a sign to his men that he would not be cowed by the scale of the mountains awaiting them. The Gallic envoy stood beside him. Together they watched the men march into position, first one contingent and then another, the various nationalities. differing in race and custom, in armour and preferred weaponry and artistry of shield and helmet. It might have looked like a conglomeration of brutes. It was a conglomeration of brutes. But there was order in it. The various parts made an unlikely whole.
Hannibal waited until the hush had settled and grown into an energy of its own. Sixty thousand men in silence, horses and elephants quiet as well, beyond them along the outskirts the camp followers, silent wraiths, seldom seen but always seeing. The commander held the silence still longer, listened to it build. Then, motioning so that the translators knew to begin, he turned and addressed Visotrex.
‘What have our visitors to say to this?’ he asked. ‘Does my army offend the eye, or is it a thing of wonder?’
Visotrex consulted with the others in his party. He answered that before him was the greatest army he had ever seen. ‘Truly,’ he said, ‘the world is Hannibal’s to shape as he sees fit.’
After waiting for the Gaul’s response to reach the masses in their different tongues Hannibal asked, ‘Do you hear that? The elders of the Allobroges look upon you in fear. These old men who themselves live in this country you find so harsh . . . They see you as a mighty army, engaged in a quest like none the world has ever known. They see the greatness in you and have come to offer us safe passage through their lands. They wish to escort us through, just like the Cavares who led us this far. But what am I to say to them, when among you there is talk of fear? Talk of these mountains ahead of us. Of the Romans waiting to meet us on the other side. What do I say to these men who see before them an undefeatable army? Would you have me tell them of your doubts?’
He paused and let the various translations flow through the army. Visotrex said something to the Gallic translator, an Iberian trader Hannibal had employed since the Pyrenees. The man did not speak. He would not look Visotrex in the face but stared only at the ground below him. The Gaul nudged him angrily. Without meeting his gaze, the translator trudged away a short distance, turned, and fixed his eyes on the commander, completely ignoring the Allobroges.
Hannibal did not acknowledge the exchange. These words were meant for his army, not for Visotrex. When he began again, he spoke while on the move, slowly, with natural pauses so that the translations never lagged too far behind him. He walked close to the troops, strolling the various lines of them in easy appraisal, something humorous indicated in his gait. ‘Tell me truthfully, what’s this I hear of fear in your hearts? I believed myself to be in the company of the heroes who carved up Iberia, who strode across the Pyrenees and hacked a path through tribe after tribe of barbarians. Is there not a man among your number named Harpolon, who slew the champion of the Volcae with one swing that loosed his head from the body that supported it?’
A confused murmur ran through the group, until one man held his spear aloft and shouted that he answered to that name and that deed.
Hannibal stood for a moment on the balls of his feet to seek out the hero, then proceeded with his walk. ‘When pressed hard by the barbarians in the Pyrenees, did not a man named Trasis save his whole company by mounting a riderless stallion and singing them to re-form? Among us, is there not a young soldier named Vaca who was first over the wall of Arbocala? I believe that these are men to be praised, honours draped round them that they can carry all their days. But honours are nothing unless a man sees them through with further action. Would men still sing of Alexander the Great if he had retired from war and lived to be a hundred, fat and rich and fearful of the glories of his youth? No! The truth is that here in our company we have heroes awaiting a poet to immortalize them. But there are no poets to be found at the foot of the Alps. Nor in retreat across the Rhône. Not even in New Carthage itself. If you would have someone write your tale, you must first seat yourself in a Roman palace. From there call forth the best writers of the world. Call forth Greeks, who weave words so well. Dictate to them the deeds that will make you immortal. This is all within your power if you are men enough. If you are men enough . . .’
The commander repeated the last phrase slowly, questioning it, prodding them with it and with his gaze, which moved around, pausing on individuals and probing each as if he asked the question of him in particular. As the murmurs of the translators faded away Hannibal looked up and caught Bostar’s eye; Bostar in turn motioned for a young squire. The boy ran forward, leading Hannibal’s most recent mount, a stallion with a rusty brown coat so dark it neared black. Hannibal clucked his tongue in greeting. He took the reins from the squire, but instead of mounting he set the reins back over the horse’s head and walked on, continuing his discourse. The horse followed of its own accord.
‘As for those among you who care little for words to be spoken in later ages: think, then, of riches. Think of bloody joy. The booty of conquest. Do you see the men of this mountain country? Even Gauls such as these once sacked Rome. They came home laden with all the riches their new slaves could carry, lingering joy written on their faces, dicks exhausted, hanging beneath them, dripping . . . Why should they pleasure so and not us? Think about it. Are there any riders in the world equal to the Massylii? Any soldiers who can stand face to face with Libyans? Any race as determined as the Iberians? Any people as wildly brave as our Gallic allies? What do you think the Alps are, anyway? Are they anything more than rock and snow? Higher than the Pyrenees, yes, but what of it? The fact is this: no part of the earth reaches the roof of the sky; no height is insurmountable by determined men. We do not need to soar on wings to cross these mountains. We have our feet and our courage. That is all we need.’
Hannibal, without waiting for a response, snapped round and strode towards his horse. He mounted and let the beast kick up into a short gallop. He paused a moment after the translations had straggled to a halt, then spread his arms. ‘Perhaps, my friends, you have forgotten whose army you fight in. Am I not Hannibal Barca? The child of a thunderbolt. Blessed of Baal and the seed of Hamilcar. If you forget your own courage, study mine. If you forget honour, look to me for its definition. If you doubt your destiny, know that I’ve never doubted mine. Imagine, my men, the view from the heights down upon the rich land of Italy. Let us end this story in a way that pleases the gods, on Mars Field, between the Tiber and the walls of Rome.’
There followed the pause during which his words were passed from one dialect to another and absorbed. Hannibal knew that during the mumbling, multilingual hush thousands of eyes would stay fixed on him. He kept his arms aloft, fingers loose and open. With the pressure of his legs he directed his horse to move him before the troops. It was in that swaying, wings-spread posture that he heard his army’s response.
The shouts of approval came first from the Carthaginians, as he had known they would: Bomilcar’s booming voice; a call that he recognized as Mago’s even though it had a strangely falsetto quality; Monomachus yelling the names of the gods best invoked in combat preparation. This was as he expected, but he knew the true reception of his speech when the Libyans answered him. From the central, African heart of the army came the deep-chested chorus of the heavy infantry. After that came a volley of shouts from the Balearic troops, their voices projected in bursts just as their missiles were in battle. Next the Numidians’ voices rose in jackal-like ululations. And then the entire army bloomed into a tumult of echoing, reverberating proportions. If there was doubt in any man’s mind it was pummelled to silence by the cacophony of an army remembering itself, declaring its rebirth in a theatre framed by granite.
Hannibal lowered his arms. He moved away, past the bewildered Allobroges and towards his quarters. This discourse completed successfully, he put it out of his mind and thought about the things to come, the dying that this Alpine crossing was to be.
Carthage sprawled atop a craggy landscape that looked out onto curving stretches of pale beach. Many of its buildings were bleached as white as eggshells. Between them thronged such a variety of shapes and objects as to make a puzzle of urbanity, a confusion on the eye, a maze punctuated by obelisks and stout-columned temples. Here and there plumes of palms and spires of pines sprouted above the skyline, suggesting cool springs beneath, bubbling waters, a lushness Imilce had not expected. A city of almost a million people, all secured behind battlements that dwarfed those of New Carthage, higher by twice the measure, visibly stout, as if the architects wished to advertise the thickness of the walls. And beyond this throng of humanity, a cultivated landscape stretched farther than the eye could see, field upon field of wheat and barley, vineyards, orchards of dates and plums and olives.
Standing on the docks, Imilce could barely keep her balance. Nausea swelled in her and she had to fight back the urge to double over and grasp her abdomen. The world was supposed to be steady, her feet back on firm ground, but instead the dead stillness of the stone beneath her was a misery worse than the rocking of the boat. And worse still was the fact that only she seemed to notice this. People surged past her on all sides, men hefting urns, pulling sledges, loading packs onto mules. An elephant – far too near at hand for her comfort – dragged behind it a massive piece of furniture, exactly what she was not even sure. She was aware simultaneously of wealth and of poverty, of fragrant perfumes in one breath and the sweating stench of labour in the next. Though she looked from one thing to another the sights cluttered her mind instead of resulting in order. She touched on forms without registering the meaning behind them. She had to reach out to steady herself and was surprised to realize she had grasped Sapanibal’s arm. The older woman looked askance at her, not sharply but with her usual air of silent criticism.
‘Come,’ she said, ‘there will be a carriage waiting.’
Imilce swallowed down the taste from her belly and walked. She realized that many of those moving around her were attending them and the stores of gifts and personal items they had brought with them. Her maid was at her other elbow, and Little Hammer clung to her, his eyes wide and hungry for this new world. Inside the small carriage, Imilce sat stiff as her maid placed Hamilcar on her lap. She placed a hand over his knees, hoping that the boy would hold still and let her think. But he would not. Even this cramped enclosure offered many things of interest: the polished wood frame around them, the gold buttons sewn into the padded fabric abutting the women’s knees, the view of the passing world through the carriage door. Imilce reached up and tugged a curtain across the opening. A moment later Hamilcar grabbed the material in two fists and buried his face in it, finding in this act an unreasoned joy that translated throughout his body. His mother had a sudden desire to squeeze him tightly, two-handed across his belly. But instead she pulled him back and pinned him to her chest. She kept her eyes lowered for the rest of the jolting ride, taking no comfort in it, enjoying no luxury despite the soft fabric and the cushion beneath her.
Sapanibal glanced at her several times throughout the ride but said nothing.
By the time she entered the Chamber of the Palms at her mother-in-law’s palace, Imilce walked on unsteady legs. Her insides moved and shifted of their own accord, threatening to spill up and out of her in waves that came without rhythm but often. It was good, at least, to be out of the sun, away from the heat and bustle of the streets. She listened to the wooden door as it swung shut behind them, heard the bolt driven into place. She moved forward behind Sapanibal into a reception area as cool as an ancient forest. Granite pillars grew up from the stone slabs like the trunks of giant trees. The ceiling must have been wooden, but it was planed smooth and painted a dark crimson. The walls were not really so far away, the room not really that large, but the rows of pillars several deep gave the space a feeling of cramped grandeur. Something about it even stilled young Hamilcar. He went limp in his nurse’s arms, tilted his head back, and stared, open-mouthed, at the ceiling.
Sapanibal halted in the central area of the room, a greater space as one pillar was missing. There were chairs and low sofas nearby, but they did not sit down. Sapanibal stood with her hands clasped before her and was silent for a time. Then she said, ‘We’ll wait here.’
A few moments later, a door at the far end of the chamber swung open, pushed on its wooden hinges by two adolescent boys, each bent to the task. Behind the swinging barricade came Didobal, widow of Hamilcar Barca, mother of the pride of lions now at war with Rome. Attendants framed her on either side and behind, young and old women in colourful dress. A boy walked at her side, his head a platform on which she rested her left hand.
Imilce had conjured absolutely no image of this woman ahead of time and therefore her appearance was always to have been a revelation. And indeed it was that. Imilce knew that Didobal’s mother was of native stock, from the Theveste people who lived south of Carthage, but she was still surprised at the richness of Didobal’s skin, darker than any of her sons’. Her eyes sat widely spaced and her cheekbones were high, rounded, and regal. Her hair, woven into an intricate crosshatching of tight braids, was black, thick. From her first glimpse of the Barca matriarch, Imilce knew that she was not a woman easily deceived. Though she did not exactly know why, this realization troubled her.
Sapanibal greeted her mother with a formality Imilce had never seen in her. She touched one knee to the floor, bowed her head, and pressed her hands to her forehead, ready to receive her mother’s blessing. Didobal stepped up close to her, studying her as if she might not positively recognize her. Sapanibal whispered a prayer of greeting, speaking reverently, admitting her debt to this woman for her very creation and invoking the blessings of Tanit, the mother goddess of Carthage.
Didobal heard all this indifferently. ‘Rise, dear,’ she said. ‘I know what you owe, and I know that you know it as well.’
Sapanibal released the woman’s hand and straightened. She stood with her arms stiff at her sides, chin upraised in a posture wholly out of character.
‘You have not aged well,’ Didobal said. ‘There was always too much of your father’s mother in you, too much of the East. But I have made peace with that long ago. You are distinguished in your own way, and you are welcome here. It will give your sister joy to see you. Tell me of this other one now, daughter.’
Released from scrutiny by that simple sentence, Sapanibal resumed herself. She half turned towards Imilce and said, ‘Mother, this is Hannibal’s beloved, Imilce, daughter of a chief of the Baetis named Ilapan. She is known as a beauty and is fertile as well, for she has borne us a son, the first male of his generation.’
Didobal would have known all this already, but she rested her gaze on Imilce and nodded as her daughter spoke. Imilce knew something of how to greet Carthaginian women, but still she felt completely unprepared for this encounter and wondered how she had ever reached this point without thinking more of this moment. When Sapanibal paused, Imilce imitated her formal greeting, her hands outstretched from her forehead, head parallel to the ground, one knee against the cool stone beneath her. It seemed to take for ever for the woman to acknowledge her with a touch. Fleeting and brief though it was, Didobal’s fingers left a scent on hers, a perfume carried in an oily lotion that Imilce was to smell for days after. She heard the woman bid her rise.
‘You have a delicate face,’ Didobal said.
‘Thank you,’ Imilce murmured. She tried to look at Didobal directly but this was no easy thing. The woman’s eyes were not hers alone but were also those of her son, deep-set, of a similar colour, and with the same simmering intelligence. Strange that the quality of the mind behind the eyes can be conveyed through them. Imilce knew she would never be able to look at Didobal without seeing her husband. What she did not know yet was whether this was going to be a blessing or a curse.
‘If my son married for beauty alone, then he chose well,’ Didobal said, ‘but old ones such as me know that counts for little. There is more to a woman than her face and bosom. More even than her abundance in childbearing. I told my son this in writing and he assured me more substance was to be found within you. He asked of me the patience to see you slowly. I will grant him that. But, daughter, I have no love for your country. It’s a mistress that has kept my men from me for too many years. This is hard to forgive . . . But now, before we take our leisure, let me see my son’s child.’
Imilce motioned to her maid, who offered her Little Hammer. She held him awkwardly on her hip. The child was surprisingly still, his fists clamped tight round folds of his mother’s gown.
Didobal frowned: the view was not sufficient. She slipped her dark hands round the boy and prised him away from his mother. Hamilcar seemed ready to protest, but he paused before doing so, unsure how such an action would be dealt with. Didobal took a few steps away and studied him in a shaft of light that cut down diagonally from a window high on the wall.
Imilce wished she had answered more strongly. She should have said that Carthage was her country now and it was war that was their men’s mistress, not any particular nation. She should have said that she too regretted that her husband was always away, always in danger. She should have said many things, she thought, but they were already dead inside her. Silent, she glanced up at the ceiling. Her eyes were first attracted by the flight of a tiny bird, but then lingered up there because of the sudden suspicion that the ceiling was not solid at all but was a dark liquid threatening to drop down on them in a sudden deluge. It was hard to pull her eyes away from it.
Didobal turned round. Her façade was composed and calm as before, but her eyes were tinged a watery red. She handed the boy back, not to Imilce but to the maid. She half turned away, but paused long enough to say, ‘Come. You are welcome in my house.’
Imilce searched the woman’s profile for any sign of the emotions behind it. But there was nothing to betray her thoughts. Viewed from the side and heavy-lidded, her eye was flat and without perspective, a single dimension and therefore hard to read.
The interview over, Didobal withdrew. The two women waited a moment as the matriarch’s servants escorted her out, like insects buzzing protectively around their queen.
Though Didobal did not speak directly to Imilce again that day, she formally introduced her to the aristocracy of Carthage. The women greeted her as if modelling themselves on the matriarch: aloof, distant, grandiose, indicating in their words and gestures that she had yet to prove herself to them. The men were a little kinder, but clearly, however, this was not a measure of true respect but of an irreverent flirtation. They commented upon Hannibal’s good fortune in winning her, upon his epicurean eye. They alluded to the women the commander could have chosen from, the others he must have sampled prior to her, the attentions she could, in turn, wring from the besotted hearts of other men.
Despite even these flatteries, the essence conveyed throughout the afternoon was that she was not very important. Her presence was of note for two reasons: her link to her long-absent husband, and the role she filled as mother to another generation of Barcas. They asked again and again about her son, and told her again and again about her husband, as if she did not actually know the man but was in need of education by these Carthaginians, people who, despite their distance from him in space and time, seemed to believe they knew him better than she. She felt increasingly ill at ease throughout the afternoon. Her stomach still churned and protested within her. Cramps racked her from low in the pelvis, radiating up.
In a lull before the evening’s activities, Imilce excused herself to go to her bath chambers. There, as she squatted to relieve herself, she discovered the reason for her physical symptoms. They were not born of the day’s stresses alone, but were the long forgotten symptoms of her monthly bleeding, which she had not had since the blessed month she became pregnant with Little Hammer. How many moons had passed since last this flow issued from her? How many years? She had hoped that Hannibal’s seed would somehow take hold in her again – even before she knew that her cycle had resumed – but clearly this had not happened.
Still squatting, she let herself lean back against the stone wall. She grasped her head in her hands and squeezed; she did not know why. She thought of Hannibal – wherever he might be at that moment – and she silently chastised him for leaving her alone with all this.
Sophonisba appeared like an answer to prayers Imilce had not even uttered. Hannibal’s youngest sibling approached Imilce in the garden of the palace in the early evening light. She carried two small goblets, one of which she offered up. They had met earlier in the afternoon but had exchanged only nods and the routines of greeting.
‘Have you tried this?’ Sophonisba asked. ‘It’s a wine made from the fruit of palm trees. It’s a poor person’s drink, but Mother is fond of it and always has a little on hand. We should drink discreetly, though. Come, walk with me by the fish ponds.’
Sophonisba could not have been more than twelve or thirteen, just budding with the first indications of the woman she was to become. But she walked this line between childhood and maturity nimbly, with a confidence that touched Imilce with shame. And it only took her a few glances to realize that Sophonisba was at the verge of a monumental beauty. She was her mother’s daughter, in her forehead and the character of her cheekbones and in her nose, but her skin tone was the lightest of all her siblings’ and her mouth was narrower, a soft, full oval. Imilce felt her own appearance wanting beside this girl. Fortunately, Sophonisba did not agree.
‘You’re the most graceful woman in Carthage,’ she said. ‘The others will be jealous, so pay them no mind. One would think you were carved by an artist instead of born from between a woman’s legs. And your baby . . . Mother was beside herself. You cannot tell it to look at her now, but this afternoon she went to her chambers and cried, thinking about him. She hasn’t done that since she learned of my father’s death.’
Imilce held the palm wine without lifting it. ‘Did the child so disappoint her?’
‘Disappoint?’ Sophonisba repeated. She ridged her forehead in a manner that temporarily rendered her surprisingly unattractive. Then she dropped the expression and all was as before. ‘She was moved to tears of joy. She beheld her firstborn grandson for the first time today. She saw her son in his face and in that is her husband’s face made immortal. No, she was not disappointed. What she felt was . . . It was rapture.’
Imilce stared at her for a moment.
Noting the look, Sophonisba stepped closer. She said, ‘Though I am just a girl, I think perhaps we can be friends. Would you like that?’
Imilce nodded. ‘Very much.’
‘Good. As my service to you, I will tell you everything there is to know about Carthage. Everything important, at least. But first, you must speak to me. Tell me of my brothers. I’ve not seen any of them save Mago in years. Truthfully, sister, I do not remember my other brothers at all. Tell me about them, and then about other young men. The noble ones. I am as yet unmarried. There is a boy here, a Massylii prince named Masinissa, who is quite taken with me. He says he will have me for his wife some day. Have you heard of him?’
‘No,’ Imilce answered.
A ripple of disappointment passed over the girl’s face. ‘Well . . . You will in years to come. I might have him as a husband, but not without knowing something of real men, men of action. Masinissa is handsome, but he is as yet a boy. So, tell me. Talk. I will hold my tongue while you do.’
Though the girl did hold her tongue, Imilce began slowly. She wanted to convey how much Sophonisba had just done for her, how she was awash with relief and affection. How only this girl among all those whom Imilce had so far met had spoken to her with an open face. But she had not been asked this, so instead she cleared her throat, sipped the palm wine, and answered all of Sophonisba’s questions as completely as she could. Though she carried on bleeding, silently, secretly, she knew she could bear this world a little longer.
When he first heard about the Roman legions’ arrival in northern Iberia, Hanno desperately wished that he possessed his eldest brother’s brilliance, or Mago’s intelligence, or Hasdrubal’s boldness. But he also remembered that he had left them all months before, with farewells given through gritted teeth. The last time he spoke to Hannibal, the words between them had boiled almost to violence. It was the nearest Hanno had come since they were adolescents to lashing out physically at his brother. There had been a time when they often fought each other to the ground and came away bruised and bloody. But as they both became more adept at warcraft they seemed to recognize a tendril of threat that they dared not touch. Still, when Hannibal ordered him to stay south of the Pyrenees Hanno suffered through a few moments of wanting to swing for his brother’s head with something heavy and sharp. It was not just the order. It was the timing as well, the evening he received it, and the host of things it suggested his brother knew of and thought about him.
He had begun the night drinking the local wine with Mago, Bostar, Adherbal, and Silenus. Adherbal spoke of a correspondence he had received from Archimedes, the Syracusan mathematician, detailing theories he thought applicable to military defences. Silenus remarked that he had once dined with Archimedes – raw oysters, if he remembered correctly, eaten on a patio abutting the sea rocks, from which they watched boys pull their meal directly out of the water. A short while later, Silenus interrupted Bostar mid-sentence. The secretary had just mentioned the suggestion that new coins be struck bearing Hannibal’s likeness on one side, with words naming him conqueror of Italy on the obverse. Silenus found this premature.
‘One cannot count a victory accomplished in advance,’ he said. ‘Consider the Aetolians just a few years ago. They were certain that their siege of Medion was soon to prove victorious. So much so, that as they neared the date for their annual elections the retiring leaders argued that they should have a say in distributing the spoils and receive credit for the victory by having their names engraved on commemorative shields. The soon-to-be-elected objected. If the siege succeeded on the first day they were in office, well, so be it. Must be the will of the gods! And so only their names should go on the shields. Of course, neither party could accede to an agreement that gave the other the honour, so they resolved that whoever was leading them when the siege succeeded they would all share the spoils. Very high-minded of them, don’t you think? Very egalitarian, to use a word you may not be familiar with. They even worked out the inscription they were to engrave on their shields to commemorate the victory.’
‘And your point?’ Bostar asked.
‘I am just now reaching it. Demetrius of Macedon had hired himself to help the Medionians. His contingent of five thousand Illyrians landed on the very evening after this resolution was passed. They met the surprised Aetolians the next morning, dislodged them from their positions, and trounced them. So much for their sure victory. On the day following, the Medionians and Illyrians met to discuss the issue of the shields and how they should be inscribed. They chose to use the same structure the Aetolians had decided upon, inscribing both the names of the present Aetolian commanders and those of the favoured candidates for the following year. They made one change, however. Instead of writing that the city was won by the Aetolian commander, they wrote that it had been won from the same commander. Clever, yes? A single word altered and yet with such significance.’
Silenus leaned back and hefted his goblet. ‘Do not count your cause prematurely victorious. That is my point. And do not put your hubris in writing, for some quick mind will surely find fault with it.’
The Carthaginians answered this with the usual guffaws and good-humoured jesting. All except for Hanno. He had never been fond of Silenus, but of late it seemed that the Greek irritated him every time he parted his lips. His mouth even had an insolent shape. It was too narrow, too full towards the middle, pursed slightly, as if Silenus were always on the verge of blowing a kiss. The others did not seem to notice it, but the Greek’s smugness was unbearable.
Later, when he found himself walking towards his tent with the verbose scribe beside him, he listened just to see how long Silenus would rattle on before he realized that his words were falling on deaf ears. When Silenus stepped inside Hanno’s tent unbidden Hanno still believed he was on the verge of strangling him. And yet that is not exactly what transpired.
Seating himself on a low couch that had recently belonged to a tribal leader, Silenus unplugged another vase of wine. He kicked his wiry legs up beside him and tugged his short tunic into place with his free hand. As he poured, he said, ‘You’re a hard nut to crack, Hanno. Do not take that amiss. What I mean is that I’ve been watching you. Watching you watch others, myself included. An interesting study, I promise you. But it is the way you look at your brother that I’ve yet to figure out. You sometimes look upon Hannibal with . . . What’s the word I mean?’
‘Like all men who know him,’ Hanno said, ‘I trust my brother’s wisdom.’
‘But you are not “all men”. He is your brother, for one thing.’
‘Yes, we are fingers of a hand,’ Hanno said.
Silenus smiled at this, pursed his lips, and then smiled again. He seemed to have a response, which at first he waved away, but then could not help but speak. ‘Who is the long pointer of this hand, then? Who is the thumb, and who the little runt on the end? Tell me truthfully, Hannibal wears heavy on you at times, yes? His eyes are ever judging. He sees weaknesses less observant men miss.’
Hanno formed a casual rebuttal to all this, words expressing nothing but disdain for the topic. About to deliver it, he caught the spark of amusement in the Greek’s eyes and knew that his rehearsed words would sound dead even as they left his tongue. Instead, he snapped, ‘It is not my fault that my brother disapproves of my inclinations.’
‘Of course it isn’t. Who meets Hannibal’s standards but Hannibal himself?’
Hanno took the wooden cup Silenus proffered and brought it to his mouth immediately, feeling the bite of the wine against his chapped lips. He found, without either realizing it or being surprised by it, that he was inclined to speak, to fill the Greek’s unusual silence with confessions.
‘Do I feel his eyes always upon me?’ he asked. ‘Yes. Even when his back is turned towards me. If I take one moment of luxury, one pleasure, he looks askance at me. This from a man richer than most who have ever lived, from a family and a people who love wealth and fine things. He seems to think I am weak just for being true to my people.’
‘Does he see the same weakness in Hasdrubal? That one certainly takes his pleasure unsparingly.’
Hanno realized his palms were sweaty and his chest tingled as if he were approaching an enemy to do battle. Just a few moments had passed, but he had no idea why he had spoken as he just had. ‘This is no business of yours,’ he said. ‘As usual, you forget yourself.’
‘I apologize,’ Silenus said, ‘but, Barca, you are a difficult script to read. Have you ever wondered what your life would have been if you’d been the firstborn of your mother?’
‘The same as it is now.’
‘How do you mean? Would you have been the leader of the army then? Hanno, the Supreme Commander of the Army of Carthage . . . Or would that title have gone to your brother, as it does now, but somehow skipping over the eldest? I mean, in which way would it have been the same?’
‘It is a foolish question,’ Hanno said. ‘A philosopher’s trick. You may speak circles round me, but the world is as it is. No other way. This talk bores me, Silenus. You bore me.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ Silenus asked. He dropped a leg down from the couch, exposing his inner thigh for a moment. ‘Sometimes it seems to me that what you feel for me is not boredom, not distaste at all, but rather a certain hunger. We Greeks understand this hunger better than any. I possess the tools for this training in abundance, my friend. In abundance. Perhaps you should have me school you in it.’
‘Perhaps,’ Hanno finally said.
Silenus, his face quite near the other man’s, grumbled an affirmative, a sound from low in his throat, stretched out. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Perhaps . . .’
The Greek let the word and the possibilities presented by it linger in the air between them. Again, Hanno felt the overwhelming desire to lash out. But he knew the feeling was not simple anger at all. It was, as Silenus said, a certain hunger. He wanted to press his mouth to the Greek’s and silence him with the force of his lips and tongue. He wanted to lift him bodily and throw him down and teach him that they were equal in body if not in wit. He had never considered that he harboured such passion for this one, with his thin frame and bowed legs and his too-large head and the arrogance that bound it all together. He was no warrior. No specimen of manly beauty. And yet Hanno wanted him with an urgency that punched him low in the abdomen. He wanted brutal, intimate violence, and he had never understood this fully until that moment.
A call from outside his tent interrupted his revelation. Hanno answered hoarsely, and a messenger said that Hannibal wished to see him. ‘The commander apologizes for the late council,’ the voice said, ‘but he would speak to you presently in his tent.’
Silenus raised a single eyebrow and finished the sentence he had started ages ago: ‘ . . . and perhaps not,’ he said. ‘In any event, not just now.’ He drew himself up and looked around as if to gather his things.
Hanno did not move anything except his eyes, which followed as Silenus rose and made his way towards the tent flap.
The Greek glanced back briefly before departing. ‘Give my best to your brother.’
A few moments later, Hanno wove his way through camp. Somewhere a lone musician worked out a melody on a bone whistle. Campfires illumed various quadrants with a low glow, as if a thick, moisture-laden blanket hovered somewhere just above the height of a man’s head and allowed no light to rise above it. As he passed a tethered horse the creature let flow with a stream of urine. The splash was so loud and abrupt that Hanno started. He slid half a step to the side, steadied himself, and glanced round. Nobody was in sight. He cursed the horse under his breath.
Hannibal’s tent flap was open to the night. The commander sat on his three-legged stool, studying a scroll on the table before him. He did not rise to greet Hanno, but took in his attire with a long look. Having seen enough, he bent his head back to the tablet. ‘I’ve called you from leisure, have I?’
Hanno had no wish to name the activity he had been called from. ‘I thought I might find you the same,’ he said. ‘The men are at pleasure . . . Will you never stop to savour your victories, brother?’
Hannibal answered without looking up. ‘At the end of a day, do you praise yourself for having lived through it? Do you not know that after the night comes the dawn of a new day? When you exhale a breath in one moment, do you believe you have accomplished greatness? Or do you remember that the very next moment you must draw another breath and begin again? A thousand different forces would love to see me fail. I cannot abandon my vigilance for a moment. That is what it means to command. Perhaps you will understand this fully some day. Come closer and sit down, if it pleases you.’
Hanno took a few steps forward, just two bites of the distance between them, no more.
‘Hanno, I know that you’ve not been happy with my decision about your role, but I’ve thought it through and my mind is unchanged. You will stay on here and watch over the Suessetani. They’ll need a strong hand to keep them subdued. I am sure you understand the importance of this. See Bostar in the morning. He is preparing written details for you: names and familial affiliations of these people, geography and accounts of resources. You should learn more of the local tongue as well. We’ll get you a tutor. I would only ask that you keep your pleasures in check. Remember, the knife that killed our brother-in-law found him in his bed.’
The interview was over. Hanno, like any common officer, had been dismissed. He flushed hot, felt a leaden pressure behind his eyes. Though he told himself to turn and throw open the tent flap and stride away he did not do so. He could not make his feet move.
‘Am I so worthless to you?’ he asked.
Hannibal, without looking up or changing his posture or tone, said, ‘You are my brother and I need a trusted commander here.’
‘Have you never considered that I, too, want to kick open the gates of Rome?’
This brought up the other’s gaze. ‘I’ve never had to consider it. The answer can be assumed by the blood within your veins. But why do you question me? This post is no punishment. It is my will. You’ll adhere to it. If I am ever to ask great things of you I must know that you will serve me unquestioningly. You have not always achieved that in the past. Consider this a new opportunity.’
Again, Hannibal bent his head and signalled the discourse was concluded. But again Hanno spoke ahead of himself. ‘In one breath you say that this assignment is not a slight,’ he said. ‘In the next you name my faults. But what’s true? Speak plainly to me! You owe me that much.’
‘I did not know that I was in your debt,’ Hannibal said. ‘I thought perhaps you were in mine.’
Hanno – watching his brother’s brow, the artery that beat high on it, the eyes running over the words – knew that it was within him to kill his brother. It was a quiet thought, really. There was something comforting in it. An escape he had not imagined before. No matter what might come afterwards, it was within the realm of possibility that he could murder; that Hannibal could die. On this ultimate of things they were equally balanced. With that thought in his mind, Hanno spun and trudged from his brother’s tent. He avoided him in the following days and parted from him as if they were enemies and not siblings at all. He pushed thoughts of Silenus from his mind. He had never before felt shame at his desires, but there was something different about the scribe and the depth of the turmoil he fuelled inside him.
Now, two months later, a lieutenant brought him the news he feared. A legion under Gnaeus Scipio had landed at Emporiae, a Greek settlement that had refused a Carthaginian alliance. The Romans had been welcomed joyously. They numbered easily twice the 10,000 soldiers Hanno controlled and made it no secret that their aim was to hunt down Hanno, and quickly.
‘We must send word to Hasdrubal,’ Hanno said during a meeting of his officers. ‘We don’t have the numbers to meet them.’
A lieutenant, though junior to Hanno in both rank and age, shook his head. ‘There can be no reinforcements. Hasdrubal is south of New Carthage. A message has already been despatched to him, but we must act independently.’
‘Decisively,’ another added.
Hanno pressed the flat of his palms over his eyes and dug his fingers into his flesh. An unusual gesture for a general, but he ignored the nervous shuffling of the officers. His bowels twisted and pulled knots and his chest felt constricted, as if with each released breath a strap pulled tighter across his chest so that he was denied a full inhalation of air. Should he act decisively? Of course he should. It could do him no good to wait. The Romans might land more troops. They might forge alliances with the Iberians and learn the features of the land and find ways to gain advantage. They would only become stronger with passing days. And Hasdrubal might still not reach him. But Hanno had no plan. What could he do to make their numbers more equal? Why did he have to struggle with this question? He should have had more men. It was Hannibal’s misjudgement that had created this situation. He left him here to manage the Iberians, but not truly prepared to fight a Roman legion. Still, still, he had to act! Perhaps he could catch the Romans off guard with a full frontal attack, before they had even settled in. They would never expect such boldness. Surely, this was the way to proceed. And if his gamble rebounded on him? Well, at least Hannibal could not chastise him for hesitation as he had at Saguntum.
Hanno finally peeled his fingers from his forehead. He looked round at the junior officers and gave them his decision. It was a choice for which he was to suffer terribly.
The first boulder announced itself with a tremor, a rumble that came from no specific direction but was transmitted through the bones of the earth itself. Mago felt it in the soles of his feet. When he saw it – a chunk of stone as large as an elephant, grey just like those beasts, first sliding down a sheer section of cliff at near free fall, then striking the slope and churning, end over slow end, snapping and pushing trees out of its path – he thought the commotion of the army had loosened it. The boulder landed on the ravine floor a short distance away, crushing under it a mule and the two men driving it. Then the whole scene flooded with a dusty confusion and a rain of smaller stones. And that was just the beginning.
The army had made steady progress in the days leading up to this one, but they spent the bulk of the fourth day winding into a narrow defile. They had to travel a few abreast, for the rock walls closed in on either side, sometimes rising up vertically around them. Mago rode near the vanguard, with the bulk of the cavalry and the two Allobroge guides, while Hannibal brought up the rear with corps of infantry. They progressed awkwardly, negotiating the stream that wound in front of them at each step, climbing over rocks, managing the horses, convincing the elephants that nothing was amiss. The line must have stretched for miles; the front of the column could not see the rear, and communication between them was difficult. It was a perfect trap.
A chorus of shouts went up from high above, followed by spears thrown down in a co-ordinated hail. The bulk of a freshly hewn tree careered to earth in a spray of pine needles. More boulders fell, and smaller stones, and more trees. The damage they did was amplified by fright. Pack ponies made easy targets and when wounded began to scream in pain. A few bolted and this maddened others. They looked wide-eyed around them and kicked out at the men trying to steady them. They bared their teeth, for they were not sure who was causing this alarm and believed it to be anyone who sought to control them. Mounts steady and calm in battle were caught off guard by this, and more than one threw its rider. And the elephants . . . They had been spread along the lead of the column and this was fortunate. Mago watched a single creature, maddened by three darts in the back, as it roared down the narrow passageway, trying to flee, knocking over carts, trampling men, and butting horses out of its path.
‘General,’ Maharbal called, ‘what is your command?’
Mago spun and called out, asking the question he already knew the answer to. ‘The Gallic guides – where were they? Somebody grapple them,’ he said, but his order was unanswered in the chaos, and the Gauls were nowhere to be seen. He scanned the heights for some way to dislodge the attackers, but there was no clear route. And, it now seemed, there were too many of them up there to deal with quickly even if they could gain the heights. It was clear the head of the column was outside the main danger, but any sense of relief this provided was short-lived.
Gauls poured out of a ravine a short distance ahead of Mago’s position. In an instant they cut the army in half and inflicted terrible damage on the confused Iberian unit they met. They worked under a protective cover of spears thrown down from a knob on the cliff side that offered a view up and down the ravine. It was clear that this was the centre of the ambushers’ operations. Mago noted as much. He was to the rear of the Iberian soldiers, but rushed forward to direct their charge. A few moments’ observation changed his mind. Stones of all sizes fell among them, denting helmets and knocking them at strange angles on the wearers’ heads, battering shields more forcefully than the blows of any sword. He saw one man impaled through the foot by a spear, pinning the limb to the ground. The man threw his head back in a howl of pain that Mago could not hear for the other noises. It was short-lived anyway. Stationary target that the man now was, two other spears pierced him. One slammed through his lower back and out of his pelvis. A death wound if ever there was one.
Mago called for an ordered retreat, which was easier requested than accomplished. A sliver of rock sheared from high above fell among them. It was as tall as a man and twice as thick. It impaled the path like a spearhead. The men around it stood back in horror. When it stayed upright, however, they dismissed the threat of it and moved round either side of it like water round an obstacle. There seemed no end to the confusion. No end to the objects hurled down on them. Mago was kicked in the flat of his upraised palm by a frenzied stallion. The blow spun him with a force he thought might have shattered the bones of his fingers. But his hand was only bruised, and it tingled the rest of the day.
He did not reach Hannibal’s council until after dark, travelling in stealth with a small contingent of guards. He found the officers huddled round a fire in the cover of a lean-to, talking in low voices that betrayed their fatigue and dejection. As he stepped into the circle of firelight, Bomilcar rose and grasped him in a quick, painful embrace. The big man tended to be both ferocious and affectionate after battles. ‘You are sound?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but only by the whim of the gods. Monomachus was right,’ Mago said, nodding at the taciturn general. ‘This was treachery planned thoroughly. How did you fare back—’
He did not complete the question. His eyes were drawn to one among the group and this silenced him. Visotrex’s son sat among them, leaning back against a pack, still as one contemplating the fire. Mago stood gaping at him. Though he had just witnessed a day of carnage, something in the young man’s presence beside the fire seemed even more horrific. His jaw hung open and his eyes stared straight before him. The damage to him was not obvious, and yet it was clear that he had been dead several hours now, his skin a pale greenish blue.
Hannibal had looked up long enough to study his brother, to inventory his body parts and verify his health. Then he lowered his gaze and watched the fire. Bostar answered Mago’s unfinished question. They had suffered badly, he explained. Four hundred dead among the Libyans, for example. If they had not placed their best infantrymen to their rear the army might have been wholly lost. They had faced about at a moment’s notice and fought with a resolution that would have impressed even Spartans. Bomilcar asked Mago his news and he confirmed what they had already been told. The army was cut in half, spread thin, its entire length overseen by hostiles who held all the high ground. This information given, the council fell silent, awaiting the direction of their commander.
When Hannibal spoke his voice betrayed a melancholy unusual in him. He did not look at Mago directly, but it was clear he was answering his brother’s unasked questions about the Gaul. ‘Just before it started I had been talking to him of his people’s customs and of his family. Do you know that he is the father of two children, twins? Two girls? I had, for a moment, convinced myself that he was being honest with me. That his people were to be true to their word.’
‘They nearly destroyed us, Hannibal,’ Bomilcar said. His deep voice made the statement hard to refute.
‘I know. I know. It was my sword that slit his belly. It does confound me, though, that men should be so foolish. This Gaul need not be walking in his underworld right now. Nor should my men have suffered so.’
Bomilcar spoke louder, as if his commander’s hearing was in question. ‘Had they destroyed us they would be the richest tribe in these accursed mountains. That’s all the reason they needed.’
Hannibal studied the fire a moment longer. ‘Quite so,’ he eventually said. ‘Mago, just before you arrived I realized something. When the first rocks rolled down and the cries of alarm went up, this Gaul jumped back as if to draw his weapon. I beat him to it and sank my own into his belly. Such was the bargain his father traded him into. But what seemed odd to me then was the look of astonishment he fixed on me. It was an honest look, the face of a man just realizing he’d been deceived. Do you know what I am saying?’
Mago thought that he did. ‘Visotrex had not told him of the planned ambush. His own son . . .’
‘What kind of man would do that? It is right for a father to die for the sake of his son, but not the other way round. Not like this. What is the honourable means of burial for these Gauls?’
They all looked to Bostar. He shrugged at first, but then offered, ‘I believe they make elevated platforms, wrap the body tight in skins, and post mourners to keep away the wild beasts.’
Hannibal nodded. ‘Let that be done. I will not see his body defiled more than it already has been by his father’s avarice. Who will carry out this rite?’
The group was silent. And the one who answered did so without speaking. Monomachus grunted a reproach to his fellows, strode forward, and grasped the Gaul round one thick ankle. He dragged him away by it, like a labourer resignedly accepting one last chore for the day.
When the sound of the body scraping across the ground had faded and only the crackling of the fire could be heard, Hannibal said, ‘I can feel already the strains on my humanity.’ He inhaled, drew himself up, and retrieved his commander’s voice. ‘Now, we’ve much to do tonight. Sit down with us, Mago. Remember that half of our army is separated from us. We’ve had no word as to how they manage. We must devise a method to unite with them. The way must be opened.’
The younger Barca thought about this. ‘It can be. I will tell you how,’ he said.
Later that night under the cover of cloudy darkness, Mago led a small force out. They gained some height by squeezing behind a flake of granite that led to a hidden chamber, which provided access to a zigzagging route up a nearly sheer stone face. Several times Mago doubted he could find a path that would bring them up as high as the protrusion from which the Allobroges co-ordinated their attack. But his whispered prayers seemed to help them onward. They were in place a couple of hours before dawn. Mago, from hiding, studied the Gauls’ fires, caught occasional breaths of their conversation. For a time he heard the sonorous rhythm of someone’s snoring, so loud he sent a few scouts to investigate it. But the offender could not be found near at hand.
At the first light of dawn they sprang. The Gauls, unprepared, were slaughtered over their morning meal. Another rain of spears fell, but this time it was the Gauls pinned to the ground beneath them. The way was opened. The two arms of the Carthaginian force joined again. Though the army could not command all the heights of the ambush gorge, they did march through, suffering still more men dead, climbing over bodies, following in the swath of fear the elephants cut through the barbarians. When the gorge widened they gained some relief. They halted in a section of the valley open to the blameless sky that did not toss down boulders or trees or darts.
The ground was flat and easily defended, snow-dusted, with an enormous rock at one end, upon which lookouts were posted. If the Allobroges were to attack here, they would have to fight as a massed army. Fatigued and injured though they were, many among Hannibal’s troops welcomed such an encounter for the opportunity to pay back the wrongs done to them. But there was no sign that the enemy cared to pursue them further, except in small bands that attacked stragglers. Mago figured that the work of scavenging from the dead in the gorge was enough to keep the Allobroges occupied for a week. The army spent two uneventful days nursing wounds, numbering the dead and the missing, taking stock of the injured animals and lost supplies, welcoming the stray soldiers and camp followers who trickled into camp, a testament to human resilience, to the dumb, animal instinct for survival.
It seemed no time had passed at all when Hannibal had the horns sounded early on the third morning. They were to march on. The soldiers rose damp from their slumber, pulled their clothing tight against the chill. They looked for the sun, but the sky hung low and heavy with cloud. As they rose the roof of the world descended to meet them. Snow. It began in mid-morning, first one giant flake and then another. Many of the men had never seen the likes of it before. The Tartesians pulled red ribbons from their bags and wrapped them tight round their heads with ceremonial import. The Libyans tried vainly to avoid the flakes, lest they be weapons of Gallic magic. They dodged and wove, so serious in their alarm that the northern Iberians fell to the ground in fits of laughter. Tribesmen from the centre of Iberia simply stopped, dropped their loads, and stared about them, gape-mouthed and indignant. The Numidians watched this all with disdainful eyes. They murmured to one another from horseback and tried to appear calm, although few could help but swat the gathering flakes from their arms and shoulders, quick gestures as one might use to dislodge scorpions.
Mago himself felt a growing sense of dread, but before it could take hold of him completely Hannibal acted. The commander dismounted at a central spot among the men and chided them for fearing puffs of white less substantial than pigeon feathers. He tilted his head up and caught the flakes on his tongue, encouraging others to do the same. His beard had grown thick over the last few weeks, but there was no disguising the smile of mirth hidden beneath it. He scooped up snow in his hands, shaped it into a ball and hurled it at his brother. Mago stared in bewilderment, unmoving, as the ball exploded on his chest. A moment later Hannibal repeated the manoeuvre, this time splattering a Numidian’s upraised arm. Soon the men caught on and balls of snow cut through the air in all directions, men shouting and laughing. In a matter of moments, the soldiers remembered themselves. They often looked spears and arrows in the eye – what had they to fear from snow? The light mood changed, however, when Balearics began to fling ice balls from their slings. The impact of these on their targets was too much like actual warfare. With effort, Hannibal reined the men in and ordered the march to proceed.
Within a few hours, the snow had lost its strange aura and become a commonplace annoyance. It fell ever more steadily, the flakes smaller but vast in number. White blanketed the stones and earth around them. It hung on tree branches and gathered on the soldiers’ shoulders, atop their heads and helmets. They fought the cold with their labour, trudging forward beneath their armour and packs and weapons, but the furnace within them was dim, and it faded as the day progressed. Their naked arms and legs turned blue, grew sluggish and unwieldy. Ice collected between exposed toes, and some men, walking on numb feet, stumbled and fell and were slow to rise.
In the higher reaches they came into a treeless landscape, seemingly devoid of life, with jagged stone raised like weapons against the underbelly of the sky. Mago found something appalling in the silent bulk of the peaks, in the way they rose one after another like an army of gathering giants, in the strange dividing line where the earth ended and the infinite sky began, and in the awesome spectacle of elephants kicking their way through snow. He was sure that the earth had not witnessed such a scene since long ago when the gods roamed the earth in physical form, hunting the great beasts whose bones still emerged from the ground on occasion. In those times, anything was possible.
As it was now, under Hannibal’s leadership. He seemed to be everywhere at once, no visible sign of fatigue on him. Mago was asleep each evening upon throwing his body down, and it seemed that the sound of Hannibal’s voice both led him into slumber and pulled him out of it. Throughout the morning he rode through the company, extolling all to work on, to persevere, spinning grand notions of the bounty awaiting them in Italy, telling them that their deeds would be written of by poets and sung at campfires in times far from this. Here was their chance to be immortal. Had the Ten Thousand faced more than this? Did this not rate next to Alexander’s marches through the Persian mountains? They would be remembered just as those of old were, but no such honour comes easily. On the first night they slept on snow-covered ground Hannibal tossed a thin blanket down on the ice, pulled a cloak over himself, and fell into an instant, deep slumber. Men, hearing his snoring, shook their heads and grinned despite themselves. What army ever had a leader superior to this?
The next morning Hannibal rode down the line telling the men they were near the top of the final pass. His scouts were certain. They had only to struggle a little longer and Italy would be theirs. To falter now would be the greatest of tragedies. Failure here would anger the gods themselves, who rarely see men come so close to everlasting fame.
Mago, leaning hard on his spear as he rested beside Silenus, heard the scribe mumble the reply, ‘Why settle for Italy? Why not a conquest of the heavens? I think the gates are up here, just a ten-minute walk or so . . . Don’t look at me like that,’ Silenus said, although Mago had not yet glanced at him. ‘This was not my idea. Did anybody ask my views? Do you know that it is said these regions are not meant for men? The closer we get to the gods, the harder our own lives become. Tell me you cannot feel it. Even the very breath coming in and out of your lungs is a labour. Tell me you do not feel it.’
Mago prepared a smile and searched for a quick rebuttal, but nothing came to him and the effort tired him. He rested a moment longer in silence. Just as they were about to move on, he noticed Bomilcar’s familiar form approaching them. He nudged Silenus and the two watched the man’s progress. He walked with his weapons and a full pack, as he had since the beginning of the climb. To be an example among his men, he had explained. He took each step deliberately. He planted one foot and gave it a moment to meld with the ground. He pushed his enormous frame up and then planted the next foot, pulled the tree up by its roots, and repeated the motion. Mago and Silenus watched him ascend towards them for some time. Though he did not look up, he seemed to know just as he was passing the two. He said, ‘What tale have you now, Greek?’
‘I am yet composing it,’ Silenus said. ‘It will be a tale of winter madness. You’ll have a part in it, my friend. Be sure of it: the Goliath of the peaks.’
‘Your tongue knows no fatigue,’ Bomilcar said. ‘If your limbs fail you, perhaps your tongue will sprout legs and run you up these peaks.’
Silenus seemed to find the image amusing. He might have said more, but Bomilcar kept trudging on and was soon receding into the white expanse above them. The Greek whispered to Mago, ‘I’d wager he has been perfecting that line since the Rhône.’
In the almost-warm hours of the mid-afternoon, they trudged their way ahead at the rear of a long line of men. Though not as heavily laden as Bomilcar, Mago also chose to walk, an offering of sweat and labour to the common soldiers around him. And it was quite an offering. The irregular snowfalls, the cool nights, and the strong sun of the clear days created layers of slush beneath the surface snow, divided by skins of ice that tricked one into thinking they provided adequate support. A foot would punch through the top layer, the man’s weight driving him down through the slush till he found purchase. Carefully, he would take one step and then another, finding security in the movement, believing he would go no farther down. But then, on a sudden whim of the living ice, he would break through again, first sinking to ankle depth and then up towards the knee and eventually as high as the waist. The pack animals, struggling against the stuff, sometimes sank so deep that only their frantic heads thrust out above the snow.
Thanks to a slightly larger ration than the common soldier’s, Mago could function better than most. At first he tugged at men and dug away the snow with his hands, cut the white flesh with the blade of his sword, and slapped the men and beasts back into movement. Later – his hands too numb to hold his sword properly, too frozen even to scoop the snow – he shouted encouragement, orders, curses to keep them moving. This went on for hours, unchanging moments passing one into the next, each step like the one before it. The face of one man merged with the face of the man before him. The half-buried body of any individual looked like all the others. The glazed eyes, the cracked lips, the mumbled entreaties, the stiff limbs jutting up from ice: it no longer had a beginning and seemed to have no end. It was just the way of the world, and the things that had been life before made no sense any more.
He could not count the number of times he believed he had reached the summit only to discover that he had mounted a lump in the mountainside, a protrusion, a ledge, beyond which new heights stretched. It was maddening. He was sure the landscape altered itself with malignant intent. It sprouted higher and higher each time he looked away. And the foul thing of it was that the world never betrayed its trickery. It always sat still and impassive under his scrutiny, like a great beast with its shoulders hunched in innocence.
At some point that he did not recognize at the time or remember later Mago gave up on the others and moved past them in silence. He lost Silenus, but such was this climb – now you passed a man; a little later, he passed you. That was just the way it had to be, he realized. Each had simply to struggle on – he just like the others. His extra rations were not enough to set him apart. His body was feeding upon itself. He could feel the process draining him, dissolving the tissue beneath his skin, sucking the fluids from his muscles and leaving them leathery cords, striated bands stiff in movement and slow to answer the instructions he willed upon them.
He was on all fours – scraping them forward inch by inch – when a burst of air hit his face with a force that nearly shoved him back down the slope. The air was sure to have been cold, but he felt the force more than the chill. At first he cursed it and ducked beneath his elbow, thinking he had reached yet another rise, with yet another view up towards the insurmountable. He felt his breath rushing back from the bitter cold just before his face. There was no warmth in it, and he wondered if he had begun to go cold on the inside. First his feet and then his hands, his knees and forearms, perhaps now his chest itself: all the parts of him were slowly freezing solid and becoming one with the mountains. He found this a pleasant thought. He could lie motionless and no longer struggle. He could remember stillness. It was possible to stop labouring and rest. The Greek was right. Such heights as this were not meant for mortal men. Why fight this truth when one could sleep instead? It was not so hard to give up. It was only hard to carry on.
And so Mago might have stayed if the voice had not reached him. He lifted his head and, squinting into the wind, realized why it buffeted him so forcefully. There was nothing above him but sky. To the south, a patchwork of clouds drifted across a blue screen. Mago rose to his feet and stumbled forward. The ground beneath him was suddenly bare rock, marbled by windswept currents of snow. The mountains dropped all the way to the valley floor before them. He could almost make out the flat plain and its imagined lushness. He was at the summit!
A madman stood atop a boulder, no more than a stone’s throw away. It was the madman’s voice that stirred Mago: he pointed out and shouted to the passing soldiers that the goal was in sight. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘the rich land of Italy! See it here, the rewards for your labours. We’ve brushed our heads against the roof of the world and need go no higher. The way is down from here. The hard work is behind you! Carry on quickly and lay your head to sleep on flat ground!’
Mago hardly recognized the shouting figure. His beard bristled wildly about his face, grown uneven and unkempt, the hairs laden with ice, even as his forehead dripped with sweat. A crust of reddish black clung to his cheeks. The man pulled off his helmet and waved it above him in triumph, revealing a mass of woollen hair pressed to his scalp in a rough impression of the headgear. He was a wholly wild creature, garments flapping about him, like some mad prophet yelling into a gale. But Mago knew exactly upon whom he was gazing. He could hear him plainly now, and he saw in his brother’s eyes a sparkling enthusiasm like none he had seen before. Mago drew close enough to reach up and grasp his foot.
Hannibal looked down and smiled, joy written in the creases of his forehead and curve of his mouth. He spoke so quietly that Mago had to read the words on his lips. ‘Rome will be ours,’ he said. ‘Rome will truly be ours.’
Mago nodded an agreement he did not feel. He wanted to share Hannibal’s enthusiasm, but nothing was yet complete. The way was indeed down, but it was not to be easy. In many ways, the worst of the mountain crossing awaited them. The altitude that it had taken them days and miles to climb to was to be descended in only a portion of the distance, making the route almost unnavigably steep. Looking down from beside Hannibal’s boulder, Mago wondered if the Allobroges had not led them to the most terrible pass in the Alps. The bastards might yet defeat them.
Imco Vaca had known no joy since leaving northern Iberia. Not a moment of happiness. Not an instant of pleasure. He felt as if he had been transported here and dropped down in the mountains by some creatively spiteful being intent on seeing poor Imco suffer. It made no sense otherwise. Ice and snow? Ridge upon ridge of jagged rock teeth? The small finger on his left hand black and hard as a twig? This must be somebody’s idea of a joke. The fact that he could remember every step of the way, from sunny Iberia, up through the Pyrenees, into the Rhóne valley, and all the way across the Alps explained nothing. Nor did it matter that he passed within spitting distance of the commander. Yes, Hannibal spoke encouraging words, but he was such an insane-looking creature that Imco would have crossed the street to avoid him had they met in some civilized city of the world. He walked past him without a word, determined to get down from these heights and fast.
But he was somewhere in the middle of the line, and the trail the scouts found twisted and turned down the mountainside. The snow he had to walk along had been softened in the sun and then compressed beneath thousands of feet into a sheet of rutted, dirty ice. Each step had to be taken with the greatest of care, but this was not possible in such fatigue, at the edge of starvation, on frostbitten feet, laden with heavy packs. Imco saw several of the men below him lose their footing. They clutched and struggled for purchase as they began to slide down the slope. They called out for help, naming men and then gods, and then as they blurred into unimaginable speed their cries became sound alone, distorted and echoing through the mountains.
The sight of the elephants was constantly baffling. The paths seemed impossibly narrow, but somehow the creatures moved forward as steadily as the men. He once spied a cow elephant negotiating a tiny shelf of rock. She balanced in such a way that her feet fell in a nearly straight line. It was a dainty move, something fit for a circus of curiosities, but she pulled it off with a finesse that Imco wished he possessed.
Towards the end of the second day he had to traverse a path that bent at an angle about fifty yards in front of him. Beyond the corner, yet another precipice, empty space stepping off into nothing. He could see the signs of thousands of feet already gone past. Though the way was clear in front of him, he saw two men stumble near the bend, one taking out the knees of the other and then the pair clutching each other, lucky not to have slid over the edge. Be careful when you reach that area, Imco thought.
Just then, he spotted a garment on the snow a few steps away, discarded in someone’s sliding haste earlier in the day. He decided to fetch it up and sling it round his neck and present it to some unfortunate later. He lifted a foot towards it, but knew in an instant that this move had been misguided. His other foot slipped out from him as if he were kicking a ball. He landed on his outstretched hands and the heels of his feet. For a moment he held still, but then, slowly, painfully, he felt the four points of his limbs slithering over the ice. He tried to dig his fingers in and slam the soles of his feet for purchase, but he slid on, speeding up. He tried to think himself lighter, to rise up off the ice with the power of his mind and find purchase on the air itself. When this did not work he flipped over and embraced the slope for all he was worth, feeling the contours slide beneath him, each footprint and divot and ripple. He was sure the surface would drop away from him at any moment. He yelled his anger and fear right into the ice, his teeth so close to the surface he could have bitten it. He might have done so, but even in such a state he knew his teeth should be protected. They were one of his best features.
He was not sure why he stopped moving. He only realized it because his yelling became the only noise in a silent world. The two men he had seen stumble were gazing at him from a few strides away. He had slid all the way to the bend. The precipice yawned just beyond his feet. He looked at the men, shook his head, and conveyed by rolling his eyes the depths of his impatience with all this; then he rose, very slowly, and moved on. He did not reach for stray garments again.
The third day was even worse. He first understood this when a groan of exasperation flowed up the line. An avalanche had wiped out a portion of the path below. It was a particularly steep section, offering no alternative routes. They would have to clear the slide. This was bad enough, but then he learned that many of the boulders mixed in with the snow and ice were too large to be moved even with the help of the elephants. They would have to break them into smaller pieces. Someone – whose expertise on this matter Imco doubted – suggested that they build a great fire round the rocks in question, making them red hot so that they could then be drenched with water and vinegar. The change in temperature, this man said, would split the stones and make them more manageable. It sounded dubious.
Imco spent the day hewing trees and dragging them through the snow to the fire. It was absurdly difficult work, as dangerous as battle. Stuck up to the waist in snow, hacking at the base of a tree that was so hard it did more damage to his axe than the blade did to it, Imco found himself crying. This was not exactly out of fear. He was not sure what he had to be afraid of any more. The tears were not quite the product of sadness, or of fatigue, or of anger: he had felt all these things for so long that they were just part of his being now.
Memories brought the tears, the recollection that he had once been the child of a mother, that there was a woman living in the world who had slapped his bottom and wiped his mouth when he was sick and fed him bread dipped in olive oil. Everything about this seemed impossibly tragic. So much so that he did not even cheer with the rest when the rocks exploded amid plumes of steam and flying debris. What a silly thing to find joyful, he thought. Cracked boulders. More hiking. More cold. How did these things compare to the embrace of the fat woman who had created you? He could not help thinking all these men were mad, not only the leader.
Then something unexpected happened. He awoke one frigid morning at the foot of the Alps, four days after they had begun the descent. Italian soil lay beneath him. The awareness that they had done the impossible dawned on him as gradually as the brightening day. The army that had left New Carthage numbered upward of 100,000. Now, they were down to a dejected, battered, and emaciated remnant of that. Perhaps 30,000, perhaps fewer. They had lost thousands of horses. And the elephants, though all still lived, were gaunt versions of their former selves. The rich train of booty and the thriving community of camp followers were, as far as he could tell, no more.
But on that morning, even knowing all this, Imco peered out of his tent flap and looked up at the clear white-blue Italian sky. They were here. Despite it all, they were not defeated. He swelled with a sudden, long-absent enthusiasm. Things might yet look up. There might still be rewards awaiting him, pleasures that his mother’s image had no place beside. Once again, Imco remembered himself, the soldier he had become and the mission he was part of. They were a storm about to break over Italy. What army could possibly stop them now?
Aradna considered herself blessed to have found the dead man. Though she had seen many corpses in her time, she would never forget the way he sat upright with an arm stretched out before him, like a blind beggar beseeching pity from unseen passers-by. Perhaps it was because of this posture that so many had ignored him. Aradna, however, could not help but notice him when a raven perched on his shoulder, looked about, pecked at the man’s lip, and looked about again. His features were those of an Iberian Celt, and he was older than most warriors. His eyes were open, lips crusted and peeling, cheeks blackened by frostbite prior to his death.
But it was not enough to deter her from reaching out and touching the garment draped over his shoulders, a thick cloak of wolf fur that might well have been cured earlier on the march. She wondered for a moment that a man could freeze with such a garment on him, but then she noticed his other hand. It pressed against a brown stain on his tunic, fingers stuck either side of an arrow shaft. His death must have been slow, his upraised hand an entreaty for medical attention that never came. It was not exactly easy to prise the cloak off him, but Aradna managed it. She trudged away wrapped in it and renewed in her belief that Artemis looked kindly upon her.
Such thoughts were truly acts of faith considering the hardships of the past weeks. The soldiers complained of their lot, but they knew nothing of true privation. She walked the same ground they did, through the same ravines and over snowy passes and across rivers cold as liquid ice. But she got no rations. The people she marched with held few supplies in trust and each harboured a deep suspicion of any person’s actions towards them, kind or cruel. They had been cut to ribbons in the gorge, their numbers halved in that single afternoon and dwindling ever since. The loose order that had bound them to the army vanished. Supplies were abandoned to the Allobroges. Men and women were cut down and robbed of their possessions, some captured alive and deprived of their very freedom.
One evening the stragglers’ camp she slept in was raided by local brigands. She had jumped to her feet at the first sound of confusion, but a man grabbed her wrist and began to drag her away. She yanked so hard against him that her upper arm popped out of its socket. The strange sensation this gave her attacker provided her a quick moment of confusion. She bashed his foot beneath her heel and fled. Her loose arm blinded her with pain, but the movement of running shifted the joint home and the pain was gone in an instant.
For a time after that she travelled alone, mingling with the rear of the army, scavenging on the debris left in their wake. She took even more care to attract no attention. Like the others, she had not bathed in weeks now. But she made sure that she was filthier than most. She caked her face with dirt and grease. Her hair grew into thick knots, hung with twigs and bits of rubbish. She strung a dead mouse round her neck. She ran her fingers through the stink of her armpits and then pressed the scent onto all her garments. She considered the fumes that met her nose when she squatted and thought that she might smear this scent on her outer garments as well. It was a short-lived idea, however. One could never tell what might stir a man’s loins. She had heard of stranger things.
But even filthy and dishevelled and starving, Aradna was a beauty. Men could not help but notice. A Gaul stopped her one clear morning at the foot of a scree slope. He was upon her suddenly, long sword in hand. He stepped from behind a tree as if he had lain in wait for some time and had chosen this moment for the fineness of the crisp air and the quiet solitude they found themselves in. He indicated with a thrusting pelvis the activity he had in mind. She spat at him. He ignored this, calming her with his weaponless hand, patting towards her to indicate that it would not hurt. Just a small thing, he seemed to be saying. Just a moment of your time. He never lowered the upraised sword. She hissed at him and gestured with her hands that he should pleasure himself and leave her out of it. But behind the bold rejection, she knew the threat he posed. He was a strong man in his prime who would happily injure her to have her. He might lop off an arm to punish her, or beat her senseless and carry her into slavery.
Aradna dropped to her knees in the scree, opened her mouth, and motioned that she would receive him with it. He was wary of this, but as she sucked air in and out of her lips he began to think again. His trousers were down to his knees the next moment. Aradna almost smiled. The weakness of men never failed to amaze her. As he shuffled forward he did not notice that she grasped a jagged stone in either hand. She drew her arms up and back and snapped them together with a motion like a bird flapping its wings to take off. Her two hands brought the stones together on his penis. She turned and fled, but not before blood splattered her face. She shook her head at the foolishness and at the curse of the beauty she had never asked for and could not dispose of.
By the time she reached the snowy plains the stragglers had so thinned that she walked alone. She inspected bodies for coins and valuables, cut flesh from frozen pack animals, added and subtracted clothing as new pieces were presented to her. Midway up the slope the gradient lessened briefly and Aradna came upon a strange pit alongside the path. It was a crater with sloping walls the height of several people in depth. The base of it showed the rocky frame of the mountain itself. In the centre of this stood a lone, dejected donkey. The creature was completely still, head hung low, eyes fixed on nothing at all and seeking nothing at all. A urine stink seeped up from the pit, strong enough to make Aradna clamp a hand over her nose. She realized that the donkey had nothing to do with the shaping of the depression. It was simply a spot that man after man had chosen to urinate in, so melting the snow and ice and leaving a steaming pit behind. The donkey must either have stumbled into it, or else sought it out in a desire to touch his hooves to solid stone. Aradna watched him a moment, thinking. Then she slid-climbed down into the hole. Gifts like this should not be questioned, just received gratefully.
She and the donkey reached the saddle of the pass late in the afternoon. Without knowing that Hannibal had done so before her, she climbed onto the lookout rock and took in Italy from the same vantage point. The army trickled down before her like a slow-moving stain, a river of filth cutting its way through the white slopes. The descent would be brutal, the night fast approaching a challenge just to live through. She could see these things plainly. But it was pleasing to look down upon the army marching before her. This was good, she thought. Good. The land they now entered was nearer to the place of her birth than she had been since she left as a baby in her father’s arms. She felt the weight of her treasure bag between her breasts, heavier now than before because she had never ceased her scavenging. One would have thought it strange to look upon her, but beneath the hard actions and filth, behind tolerance for human misery and her scavenger’s callous heart, there resided a quiet child, who could yet imagine beauty and still conceive of a life lived with joy. She saw the pathway to that joy before her, and so proceeded.
Aradna kicked out her foot and slammed her heel into the ice, dragging the reluctant donkey behind her. She took one step and then another, urging the beast down into the rich land of Italy.
The autumn of his first year in sole command of southern Iberia marked the zenith of Hasdrubal’s Dionysian debauchery. He ended the campaigning season as early as he could and returned to New Carthage. Away from the stern eyes of his brother, he submerged himself in excess. Each evening the Barca grounds of New Carthage became a labyrinth of festivities, games and music, carnal consumption. Servants stoked the fires high and pushed into them stones, which, once they were white-hot, were pulled from the fire with care and doused in water, making the rooms almost tropical, inducing sweat and thirst, turning garments damp against the skin so that they slipped from shoulders and were soon upon the floor in formless heaps. Though Hasdrubal was careful to acknowledge the beauties of aristocratic blood, he made sure the functions were attended by the finest-looking daughters of Iberian chieftains, by prostitutes, by servant girls. Nor was he envious of other men. To be a friend to Hasdrubal was a privilege all aspired to. The steamy rooms were replete with the semi-nude forms of young soldiers, bodies hardened by war and training. Mix into this an abundance of red wine, rich meat and sauces, fruits and their juices, and incense, and one had night after night of scenes that would have impressed even Alexander’s Macedonians.
Considering all this, Hasdrubal looked to his impending wedding day with some trepidation. On his own he would not have wed himself to any one woman just yet – or ever, in fact. And if he had to choose a wife, he would have picked one of the more debauched vixens in his entourage, someone who could keep up with him, someone who likewise craved sexual variety. But the choice was not his to make. In the early winter he received a letter from the Council of Elders. It was written with aged formality, so convoluted that it was almost incomprehensible. He deciphered it only with Noba’s aid.
The elders were ordering him to wed a daughter of the Oretani chieftain Andobales. He had not known that the Council was in contact with Andobales, but those old ones had long fingers, as Hamilcar used to say. The union was of strategic importance. The Oretani had been on the ascendant over the last few years. They managed to exploit the Carthaginian presence in Iberia to their benefit, striking at first one tribal neighbour and then another while delicately avoiding stirring Carthaginian wrath. They even turned Hanno’s debacle of a few years earlier – when he led 2,000 of them right into the trap set by the Betisians – to their account. They never failed to mention it, to smart at the terrible blow to their manhood. Andobales had even protested Hannibal’s union with Imilce, asking whether it indicated that the Betisians were Carthage’s favourites. For all these reasons, the Council was resolute in its decision that a high-level marriage was necessary. To disregard the order would be treason. The elders made it clear that they had the leverage of withholding reinforcements and the power to replace him if he refused.
Hasdrubal chafed at this insult. When Hamilcar or Hannibal ruled Iberia, few such orders had issued from Carthage. He stormed about his chambers, calling down curses on them for meddling; he threatened disobedience or outright revolution. But in the end he saw no way to refuse them. The move made sense. Carthaginian authority had been difficult to maintain even during the height of Hannibal’s power. The Iberians around him seemed to buck against African domination. Hasdrubal had tried throughout the summer to make it clear that his authority was as real as his brother’s, but the Iberians were ever restless, always inclined to see only the faults of their present situation, only the benefits of a change.
So, much sooner than he would have liked, Hasdrubal found himself hosting a wedding banquet. Andobales arrived in a swarm of confusion. His people were loud, inclined to laughter and consumption, to anger and deadly pride just as quickly. Andobales himself was a large man, a warrior all his life. He had fought with neighbouring tribes – or with Carthaginians or with Romans – each year since his tenth birthday. He wore his strength as sheer, massed bulk that increased throughout his torso and up to his hunched shoulders. He was a massive boar of a man, with a face that seemed to have been pressed between two stones and elongated through the jaw and nose. Looking upon him, Hasdrubal could not help but wonder what sort of daughter he might have produced. He had never seen or spoken to the girl and had no idea by what reasoning she was chosen as his bride, for he knew Andobales had several unwed daughters.
In keeping with her people’s customs, the bride entered surrounded by her female relatives and went veiled throughout the ceremony. Try as he might, Hasdrubal could get no idea of either her features or the shape of her body. The women around her varied in appearance, from young to old, dark-haired mostly and no less attractive than normal, but he took no comfort in this. Just what did that veil hide? It might conceal any manner of disease or disfigurement. For all he knew his new wife had the face of a hairless dog, of a cow, or of her father. She could be pockmarked, pimply, toothless. She might have ringworm or diarrhoea, a body rash or – as he had discovered once in a prospective partner – she could well have insect larvae growing in her gums. The possibilities were endlessly gruesome.
The bride and groom sat on opposite sides of the room. They did not share a word, but instead listened as one man and then another rose to give the union their blessing. The Celtiberians spoke with bellicosity. They stressed the significance of the bond between the two peoples. Some suggested that with this union Andobales’ people should find themselves favoured above other tribes and should have some measure of autonomy in subjugating their neighbours. One man mentioned an aged dispute with the Betisians that Hasdrubal had been trying to ignore, having no wish to open debate about such matters.
Andobales, who sat just beside Hasdrubal, stood to make a toast of his own. First he praised the hereditary line of the Barcas, naming, randomly and with little attention to chronology, their accomplishments and virtues. He lingered somewhat longer than was appropriate on Hannibal himself, as if he were actually the prospective son-in-law. Following fast on all this, however, he detailed his own lineage, which he claimed went directly back to a union between an Iberian princess and the Greek god of war, Mars. He recounted the deeds of his grandfather, and of his father after him. Nor did he fail to mention his own exploits, everything from feats of warcraft to abundance in the distribution of his seed through many wives and more beyond that.
This last point drew Hasdrubal’s attention, but then the chieftain surprised him by barking out, ‘Bayala! Bayala! Come over here, girl.’
The veiled form rose and wove towards them through the crowded banquet hall. She knelt before them, close enough to touch. Still the fabric of her veil revealed nothing. Hasdrubal barely heard the transaction that followed but understood enough of such moments to know that the Iberian was giving him the girl formally. Andobales grasped each of them by the hand. Serving as a connection between them, he named them wed, declared the two families and the two nations joined for eternity.
And that was all there was to it. The shawled form nodded and withdrew to the nuptial chambers, Hasdrubal’s eyes following until she had exited the room. The chieftain crashed down onto the cushion beside him. He lost his balance for a moment, and strained to pull himself upright, clenching his massive fingers round Hasdrubal’s arm to do so. As he was so near him, Andobales took advantage of the moment to whisper to his new son-in-law. His breath was like liquid wine itself, mixed with the fouler scent that marked some decay in his teeth. ‘My daughter has been kept pure. Pure! She is yours to pierce for the first time. Enjoy her, my new son, and fill her with many young. Make her the womb of a new army. The mother of men to slay Romans!’
Hasdrubal did not hear the news of his wife’s purity with eagerness: he preferred his women soiled and debauched. But he kept this information to himself. Nor did the notion of merging sex with his wife and Roman conquest sit well with him either. He was sure he would never rid himself of the image of tiny, fully formed, armoured soldiers stepping out from between the girl’s legs, swords in hand, evil expressions on their faces. He tried to follow Andobales’ example and drink himself towards oblivion.
Later that evening Hasdrubal stood in the hall beside the curtain that hung between him and his wife, leaning hard against the wall. The wine had been savage to his body, but seemed to have had little impact upon the clarity of his thoughts. He stared at the thick purple fabric, utterly powerless to push it out of the way and stride through. It was silly, childish, shameful even, but he was terrified to enter his bedchamber. He imagined turning and slipping away to the company of familiar women, of the young officers he was so comfortable with. He might say he had fulfilled his husbandly duties already and was out for further leisure. But he did not welcome the questions his comrades would pose, the jokes they would make, the way his lovers would sniff his groin for a scent of his wife. No, he could not bear that. Strange that he had ultimate power over so many, and yet now he felt suspended from a spider’s web, stuck fast, afraid to flinch for awareness that his movement would be translated out through a hundred invisible threads, bringing untold horrors . . .
He paused in mid-thought. A feminine hand pushed through the curtain and drew it slowly to one side. There stood his wife, still hooded, though she had changed her garments to a thinner gown, a weave so loose it was nearly transparent. She had, he was pleased to note, breasts, a flat belly, hips with something of a curve. But still he could see nothing of her face, and something in this felt ominous indeed.
‘Come, husband,’ she said in a quiet voice, soft and young. She grasped the fabric of his tunic and drew him into the room, letting the curtain fall closed behind him. Then, to his surprise, she dropped to her knees, slipped her hand up under his tunic, and grasped his flaccid sex.
‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘but I’ve heard such tales. I must see this tool for myself.’
So saying, she lifted his tunic up and tucked it out of the way. She leaned close and adjusted her veil. After a moment of silent examination, she said, ‘The gods have blessed you. And me as well.’
Hasdrubal had as yet found nothing exciting in this encounter, but that changed quickly enough. Bayala began to knead his soft member, pulling on it and drawing it out, squeezing it between her fingers. She dipped her hands in a fragrant oil and the warm moisture of this did much to stiffen him. Hasdrubal looked down on her, amazed. There was a skill in her fingers that surpassed any former lover’s. She worked him to full length, moving one hand and then the other in a choreographed, twisting, sliding dance.
Pinned as he was to the new centre of his being, Hasdrubal was at a loss for what to do with the rest of his body. He reached out to either side as if to grab hold of something, but his hands just hung there, twitching. Even his toes flexed and strained and seemed to cry out. His breaths came sporadically, in gasps that corresponded with the touch of the young woman’s hand. It seemed that she had taken complete control of him, even of his capacity to inhale and exhale. He could not deny that the fact that he had yet to see her face added to his excitement, but neither could he resist the need to set eyes on her. With great effort he lowered one arm and got a fold of the veil in his fingers. After waiting for a spasm to pass, he yanked the fabric back.
The subtle hands paused in their work. Bayala looked up. Her face was not beautiful. Her nose drew a thin line, just off-centre. Her lips, likewise, were not as full as he usually favoured. The bones of her cheeks sat high, giving a gaunt aspect to her face. But she was young, her eyes were grey and devious, her teeth reasonably straight, and her gums, presumably, larvae-free. Inadvertently, Hasdrubal raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips.
Bayala grinned more widely, seeming to find the greeting perfectly appropriate to the situation. ‘Greetings, husband. Forgive my boldness, but I’ve never seen a monument like this one,’ she said, squeezing the feature in question. ‘I have heard tales, but now I know them to be true. I could hang on this pole and exercise my arms by lifting my weight.’
Hasdrubal, unnerved by the suggestion and the seeming possibility that she might just attempt it, said, ‘True enough. But do not try that just now.’
Bayala fluttered her eyelids. ‘Why do you look so surprised, husband?’
‘Your father . . .’
‘Does not know me as well as he thinks. I would not have arranged this wedding had my own tastes not matched yours.’ Saying this, Bayala set her upper teeth on the tip of his penis and slid her tongue out against his foreskin.
Hasdrubal knew then that he had much to learn about marriage. He realized that there was a suggestion of feminine hubris in her statement that he should treat firmly. But he forgot this as the suction of her lips drew him. Marriage, despite his reservations, suddenly seemed to be an institution blessed by the gods.
On learning that Hannibal was attempting an inland crossing of the Alps, Cornelius Scipio acted quickly. He sent a despatch to Gnaeus, ordering him to carry on with the attack on Carthaginian Iberia. He and Publius, on the other hand, would return to Italy and take control of the army in Gaul. A consul deserting his army, leaving an unelected relative to a command in the pursuit of battle, and then heading off to raise a new army of his own accord was an unprecedented moment in Roman history. But so, it appeared, was the conflict facing them. Cornelius already knew that he had underestimated Hannibal. He was intent that the damage should go no further.
As father and son travelled – first by warship, then by foot and horseback, then by river barge – news reached them piece by troubling piece. Hannibal had descended from the heights into lands dominated by the Gauls of northern Italy. His army was half starved and ragged and weak, but this gave Cornelius comfort for only a few days, until he learned that Hannibal had attacked the capital of the Taurini. It was into their territory that his descent had brought him; as the Taurini were at war with the Insubres, and the Insubres were known to have allied with Hannibal, they refused the Carthaginians’ requests for help. The African took the town in three days. He put every adult male to death and enslaved the entire population of women and children.
His Numidian horsemen rode on wide-ranging raids of other Gallic settlements – even settlements of the Insubres, his erstwhile allies – killing many and robbing them of winter supplies and showing their superiority in each encounter. They even went so far as to taunt the Roman garrison at Placentia, one of the few centres of Roman control in the area. The Numidians rode close to the soldiers, singly or in small groups, challenging them to battle. Inspired by this bravery and losing faith in their Roman overseers, 500 Gallic allies rose in the night and deserted to Hannibal’s cause. Many of them carried the heads of their Roman camp mates as a token of their sincerity.
Though the men around him cited this as proof of the Carthaginian’s simple avarice and unreasoning cruelty, the consul recognized a deadly logic that chilled him. This was not simply a barbarian grasping for quick riches. Each thrust had a dual purpose. In one stroke, the capture of Taurin had replenished his depleted supplies, renewed his men’s confidence, and rewarded them with food, treasure, sex, new clothes and weapons, and even slaves to serve them. The capture also made it plain to every other Gallic tribe that Hannibal’s power could not be ignored. And it had robbed Cornelius of a potential base. The attacks on the Insubres? Cornelius knew this tribe would have intelligence of the Roman approach. With their fickle nature they had probably reneged on promises they had made to Hannibal. They would have preferred to wait a few weeks and side with the victor after the two forces had met. Hannibal’s punishment of them may have come from anger, but, too, he was defining them as reliable allies or beaten foes, either being preferable to simple bystanders. There was no madness in this, only cold logic.
They disembarked from a river barge near Placentia, mounted the horses awaiting them, and rode with haste. They dismounted in the late afternoon at the edge of the field stretching to the outpost. Cornelius wanted to walk into the fort, to greet his troops and be greeted by them, to make immediate contact and win them to him. The sight from a distance was actually heartening: the fort perched high and solid-looking, the tents pitched about the fields near it, abutting the bustle of the late harvest. It was comforting to note that the crops had not been destroyed, for they would need these supplies in the coming weeks.
But as he strode nearer to the soldiers’ tents a dread crept up into him. It grew even before he realized what had prompted it. There was nothing peculiar in the things he saw, but something in the quality of dejection betrayed by them. The fires burned low and smoky. The men huddled near the warmth, heads down and shoulders hunched forward, gathered as if in mourning. There was little conversation, no laughter; none were engaged in vigorous exercise. Even the fabric of the tents hung limp, as if the tents, too, had been emaciated by the difficult summer. He knew these soldiers were the last battered remnants of an army who had experienced a series of near-defeats at Gallic hands. Now, at the end of the warring season, they were exhausted and war-weary. They would have been made fearful by the news of Hannibal’s doings. But what Cornelius saw on the soldiers’ faces was an emotion surpassing even this. They wore the expressions of men who had just learned the prophecy of their deaths.
The consul might have proceeded straight through the grounds without making himself known, but before he could, an observant centurion recognized him. He shouted the consul’s presence to the others. Men glanced up and took him in sceptically. They rose to their feet, but not smartly, not with the spirit and discipline he would have liked.
‘Be at ease, men,’ Cornelius said. ‘Rest now. We will soon need your strong arms.’
That evening the consul wrote new letters. Of the Senate, he asked that the other consul, Sempronius Longus, be recalled and at once. The army here was not adequate to the task before it. He had nothing to rely upon but battered and fatigued veterans and a host of raw recruits barely able to march in unison. They were no match for Hannibal, especially not if he could muster the Gauls into mischief. The plan to send Sempronius to attack Carthage was no longer tenable, not with a foreign invader already on Italian soil.
He sent a letter to Sempronius, too. He began it: ‘Dear comrade, read this and fly to me. The thunder of Baal has descended upon us.’
Inside the thick fabric of the tent was a world viewed through weak tea. A small fire burned in a pit in the earthen floor. The melancholy quality of the room reflected the heavy skies and the inactivity of the past week. The struggles of the crossing were forgotten, followed as they had been by the quick moves that introduced Hannibal’s army to the people of this region. But even the capture of Taurin and the Gallic raids now seemed old memories. The foe they wanted was Roman, and him they had yet to lure into confrontation. Hannibal had even assembled the entire army near Placentia and offered battle formally, but they had stood in the field unanswered all afternoon. Now Scipio was a short ride away, camped on the far bank of the River Ticinus. But his proximity only increased his caution. He would have to be caught off guard. In the meantime, Hannibal stayed focused on the larger battles to come.
‘Let us go over it again,’ Hannibal said. He tossed a dried fig into his mouth and chewed it viciously, as was necessary to soften the shrivelled stone into something edible. The sound of Hannibal’s jaw abusing the fig brought up Mago’s and Carthalo’s gazes from their study of the diagram the commander had carved into the tabletop with a dagger. It was a surprisingly precise sketch, illustrating the makeup and usual deployment of the Roman army. Bostar stood a little distance away, preoccupied, while Bomilcar lay on the couch, his large frame cast as if at ease, although somehow betraying a tight-wound annoyance.
Hannibal had incubated a vicious cough for several days now, and with it a sore throat so painful that each time he swallowed, a dull, rusty dagger pierced his larynx. He felt alternately hot and cold; his vision was sensitive to light; when he rose, the world shifted like a vessel at sea. His frailty disturbed his mind almost more than his body. Physical pains were nothing new; and these hardly deserved comment compared to the injuries of war. But the very fact that he had succumbed to this illness seemed a defeat, a refutation of his discipline. Throughout the mountain journey and in the days since, he had recalled his father’s training, the wisdom he, in turn, had learned from Xanthippus, the Spartan who for a time commanded the Carthaginian army in the earlier war with Rome. Xanthippus taught that a soldier only needed to ignore the bitter weather to defeat it. It was a man’s acknowledgement of discomfort that allowed malignant humours to enter his body. The gods looked favourably on the stoic; likewise, they disdained the weak-willed. Such thinking had seemed right enough and had served Hannibal thus far. He had rarely been ill in his adult life and had never been bed-bound by fever. He had been uncomfortable before, but he had beaten back the elements, fatigue, and pain. He wielded a stick inside his mind and struck at any part of him that suggested weakness as one strikes at a rabid dog. And yet the creature had somehow found a soft spot and sunk its teeth in deep. He had a strange, unmanly wish for Imilce’s company, but he pushed the image of her away each time it appeared.
He swallowed the fig and spoke firmly. ‘A legion is composed of four thousand soldiers,’ he said. ‘These are divided into maniples of four hundred men. Each maniple is three lines deep, positioned so that there is space between them to retreat or charge through the various lines. The velites precede the heavy infantry with javelins, small shield, and sword. They usually lack armour, as they are the poorest of citizens. The first line of the heavy infantry is the least experienced, the hastati. They are helmeted and lightly armoured. They hurl their spears, which they call pila, in unison at a predetermined moment to catch their opponents by surprise and break their front ranks. If the enemy does not break, the hastati pull back through the spaces, and the second line, of the principes, attacks, first with pilum and then with sword. They do not swing wildly but instead try to knock away their opponents’ shields with their own, then offer one jab in an exposed place. No wasted energy, but just enough to kill. And then the third line, of veterans, the triarii, follows to finish the work, with the first and second lines both able to return to the fighting at a moment’s notice. And they do most of this in near silence: no shouts or ululations or boasting. Just action, with direction coming from the consul, through six tribunes and thence to the centurions, some sixty in number. They always seek to engage and do so without apparent hesitation. This is how it has been described to me.’
Bomilcar guffawed. ‘“Always seek to engage” . . . You should run through the idiot who said that.’
Hannibal stood erect, though his eyes stayed on the diagram. ‘Where is the weakness in this?’
Mago glanced at Carthalo. He raised his eyes and cocked his head to show that he would defer if Carthalo had an answer prepared. The cavalry lieutenant, however, just furrowed his brow and leaned to study the diagram. They had all been over this material before, many times, in fact, but they each knew – perhaps the commander knew better than any – that the tactics they had conceived to fight the legion were insufficient, at least on paper. The Roman formation was more versatile than the phalanx, more disciplined than hordes of barbarians, more a machine than a temperamental beast. Some argued that it was the development of this formation that led the Romans to break with the old custom of seasonal skirmishes and begin to subjugate their neighbours completely. They had conquered in an ever-widening circle around them, had defeated most of the Carthaginian commanders during the first war, and had even humbled Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose military machine many had thought unstoppable. Hannibal had always said he was confident that his Libyan veterans could stand toe to toe against any soldiers the world had ever known. But they were only part of the army, few in number compared with the newly trained Iberians and the untested Gauls.
‘I was hoping you would tell us,’ Mago finally said. ‘I cannot find the fault in it.’
‘Neither can I,’ Hannibal said, coughing abruptly. He cleared his throat and ran his palm over his mouth, as if he were drawing the illness from it and depositing it elsewhere. ‘If the men are well trained I think this formation is nearly unbeatable. A phalanx may be a bristling bull in full armour, but these Romans have created a creature with numerous eyes and many limbs. It may be that we cannot defeat them on an open field, not if the circumstances favour them. But discipline can be a flaw as well as a virtue. They will react as they have been trained, to each circumstance they’ve come to expect. So we must always present them with the unexpected. We must make sure that we never engage except under conditions to our advantage. We must fight intelligently, unpredictably.’
Bomilcar had been waiting for a pause in his commander’s address. ‘This talk was fine last winter, back in New Carthage, but what good is such chatter now? How can we prevail against a foe that will not fight us? That is the trick I’d like to hear explained.’
Bostar glanced between Hannibal and Bomilcar, uneasy. His face had suffered more than most from the cold. The tip of his nose and a portion of his cheeks still dripped raw from the damage of exposure. Synhalus had coated his face with one of his salves, but whether the Egyptian knew anything about frost-damaged skin was doubtful. ‘What would you have us do?’ he asked.
‘March for Rome!’ Bomilcar said. ‘It is south of us, and to the south is warmth. Is not that what we came for? I’ve never known Hannibal to hesitate. I pray he will not do so now.’
Hannibal fixed Bomilcar in his gaze, a dangerous look that was not anger but could easily become it. He had trimmed his beard recently, close enough to reveal the tense trembling around his mouth. ‘I’ll consider your words,’ he said. ‘Now leave me – all of you. We all know the situation we’re in, so let us ponder it separately. Leave me and attend to your business.’
Alone in the smoky chamber, the commander sat down on his stool and pulled his tiny field desk towards him. Bomilcar was right, of course – at least in that they must force an engagement before hard winter set in. Their situation was not so different from what he had anticipated back in the warmth of New Carthage. He knew that the campaign had thus far been more successful than most men would have dreamed, despite the death toll of the mountain crossing. But in some childish area at the back of his mind he had harboured notions of a great, swift victory. He had believed – and still believed – that the Romans would suffer only a few defeats before pleading for peace. They had gained too much in recent years to risk it all with a death struggle.
He lifted a quill and dipped for ink and ran his hand through the pages Silenus had left until he found a blank one. He had no clear thought of why he searched out these tools. He had a vague notion that he would scribble a few lines to inspire himself, that through the pressure of the quill point on the papyrus he would scratch out the words to frame the actions to come. But when his hand moved – tremulous and large round the instrument and half cramped even at the first stroke – he wrote something very different.
‘Beloved Imilce.’
He gazed at the name a moment, taking it in, remembering it.
‘It gives me pleasure to write out the letters of your name, to form the sounds on my lips. Here in my warrior’s tent, in frigid Gaul, your name is like a revelation. When I recall that you live in this world . . .’
He paused, feeling a flood of maudlin words pressing against his will. It was almost overpowering, the desire to unburden himself to her, as a man can only do to a woman, to someone so much a part of his life and yet wholly separate from his violent work. But he could not give in to this desire – for many reasons, chief among them that such soft thoughts did nothing to hone his military mind. So he wrote a different truth from what he had first intended.
‘ . . . I am reminded why I fight. I am nothing if not a warrior, but I do not love to be far from you. I do not covet victory so much that I forget the softer things of life. Believe me in this. Even Hannibal . . .’
He cupped his hand tightly over his mouth, coughed into it, and checked his palm for discharge. There was none. Looking over his words, he frowned at them. ‘Even Hannibal’ what? His quill swayed over the words, undecided, half of a mind to strike them and begin again, reading them with one meaning and then, instantly, seeing another. It seemed foolish to pen a love note, but almost sacrilegious not to. The words were true, and yet they were lies also. He could not pin them down. He searched for a way to explain the progress of the campaign instead. He thought of writing that they had come through the mountains unscathed, but he could not write such a blatant falsehood. He thought to describe military matters but did not progress far on such lines. Details of distances travelled, of soldiers and supplies lost, of alliances made and broken: it would sound like men’s babble to her, just another nightmare of masculine misery. It would make no sense in the luxury of Carthage. Nor could he find the words to describe the war in brief. Nor did he want her mind tainted by things martial. Another line of thought came to him.
‘How fares Little Hammer? Perhaps he speaks some words by now. This seems an impossible thing, but speech comes to all of us. Do not let him grow soft in my absence. He is just a boy, but he will be a man sooner than you can imagine. Have him tutored by a Greek. And also in swordplay and archery. Even very young boys can fashion bows in the African style. Remember that he is a child of Carthage and he should pay daily homage to Melkart and Baal, and to all the gods of my people. Teach him to temper his passions. Also . . .’
He impaled the point of the quill in the papyrus, cutting the flow of words. What was he doing? It had been less than a year since he left. Only a few months, one season fading into another and that into another. Why write of passions when his son was a tiny child? Why act as if he could raise his son from a distance, through words on a page?
Maharbal entered the tent just then. He moved as swiftly on foot as he did on horseback and spoke in character with his face: sharply, directly, like a hatchet blade. ‘Scipio is near! If we want him we can engage him today.’
Hannibal asked for details. The cavalry commander explained that one of his horsemen had sighted the Romans on the move on this side of the Ticinus River. They were mostly cavalry, perhaps a large scouting force, followed by pikemen and some infantry. They were an easy ride away, although foot soldiers might fail to reach them if they decided to retreat across the pontoon bridge they had used to span the Ticinus.
Hannibal made his decisions so quickly that they followed Maharbal’s report without a pause. They were to mount and ride that instant. No infantry, but all the cavalry they could call up on a moment’s notice. ‘We must move swiftly,’ he said. ‘Let’s stick the Romans and draw a taste of blood.’
As he rose, Hannibal snatched up the unfinished letter, smashing the flat of his palm against it and then pinching his fingers together like talons. He tossed the crumpled note into the small fire. He watched long enough to assure that all of it wilted in the heat and burst into flame. It had been a mistake, anyway. The musings of a tired mind at a weak moment. But that was behind him already. He stepped out of his tent into the damp chill of the morning, calling out orders as he walked.
And so it was only a few hours later that he set eyes on the Roman contingent. For the first time Hannibal saw a Roman consul’s standard on the field before him. He thanked the gods for allowing this moment, and then he set about to please them through action. He took in the land and knew in an instant how he would proceed.
Cornelius Scipio had seen many battles. He had always fought well and believed he would until the hour he died. But in the days after the skirmish beside the Ticinus he lay twingeing, haunted by nightmares and struggling to understand just what had occurred and how. The battle had started too quickly, changed too suddenly, and been decided too rapidly. The mounted Carthaginians appeared before them; the velites hurled their missiles; the two forces met; a sword slipped into the soft spot beneath his upraised arm; the Africans fell upon them from the rear. As quickly as that, the battle became a wild scramble. Someone jerked him from his mount. He struggled in the mud as shapes moved above him and horse hooves fell from the sky and battered him. He took the blows in the face and chest, his upraised arms, and his skull. Three teeth were knocked clean out and the whole of his jaw became a drooping joint of pain. He had his surgeon wrap it tightly and refused to talk. He gave orders only in writing and by nods or shakes of the head.
Two days passed before he understood just how his life had been saved and whom he had to thank. Publius. The younger Scipio was fighting near his father when the wind of the battle shifted. He saw his father take the sword point and topple from his horse into the mêlée below him. The young man rode as near as he could, hacking at anyone remotely foreign-looking. When he could go no nearer on horseback, he slid off and scrambled through the horses’ churning legs. He stabbed an African straight through one eye and sliced deep into the hamstring of another. He stepped upon the man as he fell, pressing his heel to the back of the neck, aware of the moment the man’s scream of rage was silenced with a mouthful of mud. An Iberian nearly took his head off with a sweep of his curved sword, but Publius shifted his feet so quickly that they came out from under him. He dropped straight down, the sword cleaving the air above him. He looked up for the following blow but the Iberian was gone in the confusion.
Publius was on his knees when he reached his father. He beat away a Roman horse that stood dangerously close to him and cradled the man’s battered head in one crooked arm. He held his sword waving above him and shouted orders in the clipped, strong Latin that his father used in battle. A small band of soldiers heard the cries. Soon they had formed a ring round the fallen consul. Publius lifted his father onto his back and stumbled from the field, the ring of soldiers close about him. They made it back into Roman protection and away.
Such was the story conveyed to the consul. He was thankful for his life and proud that the rescue cast a ray of glory upon his son, but he hated to learn of events from others’ mouths. In those first feverish days, he also listened as his generals tried to explain the events of the skirmish; their conflicting accounts further confused him. The first true clarity came from a scout who described the events as he had seen them from high in the hills to the west, whence he had been returning from a solitary patrol.
The two forces had met with equal vigour, he explained, though the Carthaginians greatly outnumbered the Roman party. After the initial chaos of the horsemen cutting into each other’s ranks, they dismounted and fought among their horses’ legs. Nothing seemed unusual until a group of Numidian cavalry near the rear of the enemy force turned from the field. They surged off towards the south as if abandoning the battle, but then veered back a moment later, riding to the west, in a thin line heading towards the Roman rear. The main mêlée raged on with little change, save that the Carthaginian forces stretched the line of battle by rolling out along the northern edge of the Roman forces, as if individual riders were attempting to flank on that side. The Roman line stretched to resist this, forming a bent, thin front.
Watching that desperate struggle, the scout temporarily forgot about the detached cavalry unit. When he turned to seek them again, they had ridden into a set of hills behind the Roman contingent. They weaved into the trees and bunched together near the ridgeline, gathering like a swell thrown up onto a shore. Then they roared down through the trees in a tight wedge that caught the unsuspecting Romans from behind.
A moment later the scout saw the consul’s standard falter and disappear. After that, he had watched no longer. He rode at a gallop down towards the field to be of what aid he could. He saw no more from that high vantage, but he did have more to tell. The scout had wondered why the flanking cavalry had gone unnoticed. It seemed a mystery, and he feared that the hand of a god had hidden them for those few important moments. Only on inspecting the field the following day did he realize that the Numidian riders had conducted their manoeuvre on the far side of the ridge. They had moved through a narrow depression just deep enough to hide them. The lie of the land could not have been designed any better for the ploy; nor could the enemy commander have recognized it and played it to his advantage any more precisely.
Cornelius broke camp in the dead of night and forced a march to Placentia, destroying the bridge over the Padus in the process. Hannibal followed, constructed a new pontoon bridge, and within a few days mustered his troops in the open field once again. He called the consul to battle, but Cornelius would have none of it. Not on that day, nor on the days that followed as he waited, writhing and uncomfortable, for his fellow consul and the aid he would surely bring. He did not have to wait long.
Sempronius Longus arrived in a gale of motion, panting from his forced march, claiming that he had already clashed with a company of Numidian cavalrymen and thoroughly routed them. He had seen nothing but the backsides of the Africans’ horses, fleeing, the so-called soldiers showing their true nature when confronted by a superior force. His men had cut down more than a few and left them as feed for wild beasts.
‘Already we have the bastard on his back foot,’ Sempronius said. ‘Another thrust and we’ll topple him.’
Studying his face, Cornelius saw all the features he knew so well: the familiar black bristling of his hair, the eyes set close together, the jagged scar from a childhood injury across his chin. But these features were pushed out of place, jostled, by the indignant anger in his brow, by pride in the smirk of his lips. Most of all, naked ambition gleamed in Sempronius’ eyes. Instead of the joy he had expected to feel in his colleague’s arrival, Cornelius discovered another form of trepidation, which only grew with subsequent meetings.
News came to them in pieces and none of it was good. They learned that the Roman depot of Clastidium had accepted 400 pieces of gold for its surrender, thereby making a gift to the Carthaginians of its well-stocked granary. Several more of the local Gallic tribes ended their wavering and went over to Hannibal. Then word came that a contingent from the Boii to the east had arrived, swelling the Carthaginians’ force further. Sempronius fed on all of this as a hungry wolf chews leather.
Watching him, Cornelius barely recognized his old friend any more. He sat up in his sickbed and preached patience to his fellow consul. He argued that the Gauls now flocking to Hannibal would desert him in midwinter. Rome’s cause would suffer gravely from a defeat, but would not gain equally from a victory. ‘Let Hannibal fight the winter,’ he said. ‘We can drill the army into true readiness and meet him at advantage in the spring.’
But Sempronius would have none of this. He sat tracing his facial scar with his fingers, unmoved by the injured man’s reasoning. He even offered the opinion that Cornelius’ judgement had been clouded by the mauling he had so recently received. Sempronius wanted action, swift retribution, before Hannibal truly found his footing. Each hour the African spent on the soil of their land was an insult to the gods of Rome. He argued that the only right course was the direct course. Such was, after all, the Roman way.
Throughout these debates, the army shifted camps and marched and jostled for position with the Carthaginians, who seemed to own the land now and rarely left them in peace. As was the custom when two consuls joined forces, they shared command by alternating ultimate authority from one day to the next. On Cornelius’ days, he backed and showed caution; when Sempronius held command, he moved forward, eventually setting up a new camp along the River Trebia. It was there, one dawn, that he got the battle he believed would bring him glory.
Following the orders received directly from Hannibal the day before, Tusselo and the other Massylii rose in the hours before dawn. This was no easy feat, for the night was the coldest he had yet experienced in his life, worse even than in the mountains. The air was so raw that a dusting of frost covered the earth, but it was also heavy with a wet chill that thickened the very texture of the ether. As quickly as he could, he found one of the camp’s raging fires and huddled next to it. He feasted on strips of meat from a sheep slaughtered the night before. He rubbed his face and limbs with oil, as did all the rousing, expectant soldiers. A few minutes of this and the weather did not seem so bad.
Even more significantly, Hannibal roamed among them, spurring them on, loud and cheerful, joking that a fine day was dawning, just right for a slaughter. The reckless consul was to command the day, and he was finally so near, so impatient, that Hannibal believed their moment had come. The commander knew exactly the method to win them victory. But, he said, it depended wholly on them for its execution.
Once, he walked round the perimeter of the fire Tusselo sat beside. He patted men’s shoulders and slapped helmets into place and encouraged them in their preparations. He reminded the men that they were far from home, deep in an enemy’s land. A day of judgement was now upon them. They could not run from it or skirt it. Their very lives hung in the balance. But so, too, did their greater glory. All the riches they had imagined for themselves when they began this quest were within reach. Rome still lay to the south of them, a fat jewel staring anxiously north, watching and waiting to see what Hannibal’s army was capable of.
Tusselo’s stomach was full and warm when he mounted. He knew he might get a knot in it from riding, but Hannibal wanted them to face the frigid day with fires burning within them. He rode away to the sound of his commander’s voice fading behind him, part of him wishing he could stay on and listen longer; he found – as did other men, he was sure – something fascinating in their leader’s person. But he had work to do, and his devotion was best demonstrated through action.
He rode as one among a thousand, all dark-skinned and well fed and glistening, many thickly maned. They moved through the trees, their horses fast and thundering in the open stretches, nimble and tiny-footed when stepping over fallen limbs. At some point in the journey each rider snapped a dead branch from a tree or dismounted and picked up sticks from the ground. They carried these secured in their fists, clamped in the iron grip of their fingers, just as they carried their javelins.
In the clearing on the near bank of the Trebia, they found scouts despatched even earlier than they, led by the general Bomilcar. He did not speak at all, but simply rose from his squatting position and pointed to the ford. The horsemen turned as bidden. The stones on the bank of the river wore ice helmets, crystal rings licked by the moving current. Tusselo tried to ignore this and speak confidently as he urged his horse into the water. He gritted his teeth when the chill touched his feet and exhaled a sharp curse when the water invaded his damaged genitals. He heard other men gasp and tried to believe he was not so different from them.
Soon they emerged on the far bank, hooves making clipped, muted sounds as they smacked against the stones. The horses were quivering, nervous now and wary, for this whole venture seemed a strange one. A short gallop brought them within sight of the Roman camp. They emerged from the trees in steaming, panting clouds of vapour. Before them stretched a field of tall grass, each blade bent into delicate arches by the weight of its icy garment. And beyond this stood the Roman camp: earthworks piled high, freshly hewn trees cut and bound into lookout towers, thousands of jagged points penetrating the sky, tilted outward like a great beast’s teeth. The camp was largely quiet, sleeping, the fires damped, the wisps of smoke from them rising thin and fading into the low, heavy sky. The Numidian riders beheld the scene in silence and stepped forward slowly, gradually moving to well within missile range.
The calm was short-lived. They were spotted. Shouts issued from the camp, followed soon after by a blast of horns to awaken the entire army.
The Numidians waited for Maharbal’s command, and on the first shout from his clipped, strong voice, they all began the verbal attack they had been instructed in. They shouted in heavily accented Latin, taunting the Romans to come out and make merry, calling them children and women and goat-fuckers, offering them sexual favours, candied arseholes and open mouths, all the things they had heard Romans enjoyed. They threw sticks at them – not spears, not javelins, but the dry wood they had snatched up earlier. Not weapons at all, but branches best suited for kindling.
At first the Romans scurried about in preparation for an attack. But as the twigs and insults flew their alarm changed to surprise. Head after head peered above the battlements. They were close enough for Tusselo to make out their open-mouthed bewilderment, the confusion and then disbelief and – just beyond this – anger. They gesticulated insults of their own. A few even hurled back the mock weapons, as if the affront could be so easily returned. They stood in clear view and motioned the Africans closer. Then they remembered their lethal potential and began to loose their weapons.
The rain of javelins picked up, interspersed with arrows. Men began to fall, impaled. One riderless horse caught a javelin in its flank and went down in screeching, writhing confusion. A mounted man very near Tusselo was struck full in the chest with a bolt shot from one of the Roman crossbows. The force of the impact yanked him from the creature’s back and sprawled him out upon the frozen tangle of grass. The field had suddenly grown deadly, the pristine carpet of moments before already trampled and churned up and stained here and there with blood. Maharbal signalled for the men to pull back slightly, just enough to bait the trap.
Sempronius ruled the day, and his first waking thought was that he was going to use it somehow. When he heard of the Numidians’ antics he decided that the insult was too much to bear. He ordered full battle readiness. He knew the soldiers had not eaten yet, that they had not truly shaken off the night, or prepared their weapons or clothed themselves as they might have liked. These facts were unfortunate, but the enemy was near and so was victory. They could complete this work in a morning and dine as owners of the enemy’s camp. At least, so the consul yelled to his officers when they expressed reservations. When Cornelius summoned him he sent back a messenger explaining that he was busy. There was no time for chat. But, he said, his fellow consul could rest assured that by the close of the day Rome would be safe again.
When they marched out through the camp gate, the Numidians jumped onto their mounts, spun a few circles, called out a few more oaths, and showed the approaching Romans their rumps. Watching this, Sempronius believed even more assuredly that victory was near. Less than an hour later, he reached the banks of the Trebia. On the far side, the consul saw the growing mass of the enemy, waiting for them under the first drops of icy rain that soon became a steady sleet. The Numidians were nearest, milling about like the savages they were, trilling to one another and slapping their horses into short gallops and acting as if they had achieved some victory. Behind them Sempronius distinguished the components he had expected, units sectioned off by ethnicity and fighting style: Libyans and Gauls and Celtiberians. The elephant-beasts churned the ground fretfully near the front. They had about them a fearsome aspect, but he had already instructed his men to aim their missiles at the riders, whose loss would make the creatures of little use, randomly floating islands of damage to all, but an aid to neither side. The army was a confused polyglot monster, unnatural and ill-suited to this part of the world. Sempronius had expected as much. He even caught sight of Hannibal’s standard. He picked out the tight contingent of guards round a central figure and knew that finally the villain was within his grasp. He ordered his men forward.
The legions strode steadily into the river. They pushed through grim-faced, teeth clenched against the cold, clumsy because of the current pressing against them and the uneven stones beneath them, fighting for balance even as they held their weapons up out of the water. By the middle of the crossing the men were in icy water up to their chests. More than one soldier lost his footing and knocked his neighbour’s loose as well. Some dropped their weapons as they fought for purchase and a few went under and came up spluttering, white-skinned and dazed. Most made it across and emerged sodden, feet numb and clumsy beneath them and weapons held awkwardly in their stiff fingers.
The first of the Romans fell as stones whirled through the air with an audible hiss, nearly invisible projectiles that smashed sudden dents in helmets and broke ribs, snapped forearms, and pierced skulls through the eyes and nose. This was the work of the Balearic slingers. They were short men, not armoured at all but dressed only against the cold because they did their damage from a distance. They taunted the Romans and called out oaths and swirled their stones into blinding speed. Sempronius, who had crossed the river on horseback, shouted for calm in his men. He told them to scorn these womanish weapons and form up into ranks. The words were scarcely out of his mouth, however, when a stone smashed into his mount’s skull, splattering his face with blood.
He was on his feet screaming for another mount when the second wave of attackers hit. Several thousand Carthaginian pikemen moved into striking range, their absurdly long spears at the ready. Sempronius called for his men to throw their javelins, but the response he got was feeble. He and his men realized all at once, in a silent moment, that most had used their missiles already, either trying to hit the Numidians, or moments before when they tried to answer the slingers, who even now sent stones whizzing over the heads of their allies and home to their targets.
The pikemen picked their prey individually, skewering them from outside sword range. Some came with their weapon held in two hands and drove it towards abdomen or groin. Others hefted the spear up and thrust it single-handed into face or chest. Lightly armoured, they danced away as the soldiers charged them, waiting for openings into which to drive their spearheads home. They retreated only when the sheer numbers of soldiers on the shore pressed them back.
Sempronius called his men to order yet again. He gave the instructions to form up for battle and proceed. He was still focused and confident. He loathed the unmanly tactics of his enemy and shouted as much so that all would know his disdain. And yet some part of him felt that something was amiss. He tried not to acknowledge it. Tried to recover from each successive surprise and shape his men into the disciplined ranks he knew to be unbeatable. But when he heard the trumpeting of the pachyderms, saw the raging bulk, witnessed the power with which a single creature swatted four soldiers and left them broken pieces of men – then, for the first time, he felt a knot low in his abdomen, a ball of fear that pulsed with the possibility that events were not about to unfold as he wished.
Though he was pressed to the ground – still and chilled as he had been since the dark hours of the night – Mago’s heart pounded in his chest as if he were already in the battle. He saw it all happening and wanted to believe that all was as it should be, but he kept reminding himself not to let his expectations get ahead of events. He waited as the first Romans fell on the riverside. Watching through plumes of his own breath, he saw the legions mass and engage his brother’s main forces. He recognized their attempt at order, the way the velites came to the fore to throw their missiles. They staggered forward, some already weaponless, many dropping before the slingers’ pellets. Those who could hurled their weapons with remarkable accuracy, but they never launched their single, massive volley. Mago could find no fault with their efforts. It was simply that, from the first moments, the battle proceeded on Hannibal’s terms, not on theirs.
Soon the elephants churned through the ranks, trumpeting and bellowing as their drivers smacked their skulls and urged them on. In the confusion men were trampled and swatted into the air or impaled on tusks. The Romans feared these animals, as any sane men would, but they did not give way. They aimed their sword thrusts at their eyes, hacked at their trunks, and jabbed their blades into their flanks. More than one mahout was jerked from his post at the point of a spear.
Despite these stampeding boulders, despite the sleet and the spray kicked up from the ground, the Romans still managed to form and re-form their ranks. They still inflicted damage. Their style of battle was tight and organized. They leaned forward, closely guarded by their shields, and cut down the wildly swinging Gauls particularly well, jabbing their short swords into their unprotected abdomens and pulling back and then jabbing the next. They ate steadily through the Gallic centre of the Carthaginian forces, fighting with surprising efficiency considering the circumstances. But still the pieces came together against them. The Numidian cavalry rode circles round their Roman counterparts and soon had them on the run, pushed clear of the legions’ edges and leaving their flanks open.
This, Mago recognized, was where he came in. He nodded to the soldier beside him, who snapped himself to his feet and bellowed out the call to the rest. They peeled themselves from the ground, stiff from the long wait, many of them chilled beyond shivering. They hefted their swords and shields and began shouting out, grunting and chanting, each invoking his favoured gods, whispering prayers to them. Mago strode forward. He did not look back but trusted that the rest were behind him. For the first few steps, he barely felt his legs working beneath him. He smacked his feet down as heavily as he could to ensure his footing, and soon warmed to the work. He heard the clink of their armour and the thump of their feet against the semi-frozen ground. Initially there was something ghostly in the noise, but as they drew closer to the battle the men found further voice. Their jaws loosened, bodies fired with sudden heat. The discordant tongues blended as they ran, and became a wild bellowing that was beyond words, rooted in something earlier and deeper in the brain than language. The distance they had to cover was considerable and in the running their fury grew. Individuals picked out their targets and envisioned the damage they were about to inflict.
Mago saw the infantryman he wanted from a hundred strides out and homed in on him. He took the man with a swinging blow that cut his neck to the spine. A warm spray of blood coated Mago’s clenched fist at the sword hilt and splashed up his arm. The man never knew what hit him. Nor was he alone. Mago’s group drove into the side of the legions like famished locusts, stepping over the bodies they had slain to get to more. The legionaries in the centre could not yet have known what had happened, but they must have felt the shifting press of the men on both sides of them and with it the first hints of panic. Their forward progress ground to a halt. Instead of slicing through unarmoured Gauls, the front ranks were now toe to toe with the spears of the Libyan veterans, soldiers fresh from the fires, well oiled and salivating for Roman blood and urged on by Bomilcar, whose voice boomed above the din.
For Mago, the battle lasted no more than a few blurred moments. His arms lashed and thrust, his legs stepped over bodies, his ankles stiffened to steady him on the earth or on the abdomens or backs or necks of those beneath him. He turned and ducked and screamed at the top of his lungs, all at a speed beyond thought. A primal fury took hold of him completely and rendered him, for a few moments, a furious agent of death. He would remember afterwards that he sliced open the unprotected belly of a velite with a right-handed stroke. On some impulse previously unknown to him, he punched a fist into the man’s abdomen and ripped out the warm, steaming loops of viscera. He flicked them from his fingers and pushed the man from his path and carried on. He would later find images like this troubling, but in the heat of those short moments he was his father’s son and Hannibal’s brother, gifted at death, fighting not with his deliberative mind but with pure instinct.
He was among the first to drive the Romans into the river. He felt the euphoria of blood but the work was no clear rout. The Romans managed some order in their retreat. He was ankle deep in the crimson water when he realized Hannibal had called the battle to a halt. He stood panting, watching the remnants of the legions retreat behind the screen of falling sleet, which was turning gradually to snow. When he turned and looked upon the carnage, it took his breath away, not in elation or even relief. He knelt as if to pray and, thus disguised, spat chunks of his breakfast into the river.
His first true battle was behind him.
Waiting in the dank cell in Emporiae, Hanno had hour after slow hour to think about the mistakes that had led to his capture. But he did not consider the tactical manoeuvres that Gnaeus Scipio had so easily countered. Instead he could not shake the memory of his hands’ trembling in the hours leading up to the battle. He had first felt it as he lay awake in the predawn hours. He knew something was wrong with his hands, although he could not tell what. They felt in turn as if they were being pricked by thousands of tiny needles, or as if they crawled with ants, or as if they had been submerged in icy water and had turned blue with cold. He slid them under his buttocks and stilled them with the weight and warmth of his body, but after he rose the tremble continued, gaining strength.
At his meeting with his generals he tried to disguise the trouble, but they clearly noticed that he did not reach for the charts offered him, that he had one of them draw out the lie of the land with a stick instead of doing it himself, that he sat with his hands wedged between his knees. After he dismissed them, he stayed inside his tent and banged his hands against the table before him. This changed nothing. He bashed them on the hard floor of his tent. He sat on them, his mind roiling with fury that his own body spumed him so. None of these methods changed anything, and as he rode out to battle he could only still his hands by making sure they were always clenched on something: his helmet, the creases of his breastplate, the hilt of his sword, which he prayed would be drenched with Roman blood before the day waned.
This, however, was not to be. He knew it from the moment he saw the Romans on the field before him. The battle was a blundering fiasco. He tried to push it from his mind, unsure how he could even learn from such a jumbled collage of images, none of them making any sense, none offering him any alternative to help him escape the outcome. It was as if he had looked over a game board and made the move of ordering his men forward, only to discover that he had already fallen into some classic mistake – recognized immediately by his opponent – and that nothing now could avert his failure. He lost his entire army of 10,000. Most of them were killed. Many were captured. He could not even be sure how many, because he himself was seized. His guards fought to the death with the swarm of Romans that surrounded him. But when he tried to goad them into murdering him they would not. Instead they worked towards him slowly, in vast numbers, pressing in on him from behind their shields until he was so boxed in that he could not even move. They disarmed him and bound him and kicked him before them in stumbling indignity, a prisoner, a Barca in chains, denied even a mount, so that he eventually entered Emporiae as an amusement for the astonished faces of the Greek townspeople. He would so very much rather have died.
Instead he found himself shoved into a tiny subterranean room, dim and wet from groundwater and frequented by rats. Holes the size of a man’s fist lined the upper wall along one side. Through them torchlight from the hallway shone into the cell, casting shadow and highlight across the aged wooden beams that supported the roof. This was all that illuminated the chamber, but Hanno’s eyes quickly adjusted. The four walls were carved from a whitish stone, roughly, as if the chamber had been intended for storage, not human habitation. He felt the chalkiness of the stone in the back of his throat. The film of it stuck to his skin. The chill seeped into him slowly, as if the longer he sat the more he himself took on the quality, texture, and substance of the stone. Once deposited here, he was left alone, passing time that he could only estimate by the movements of the guards outside his prison, their rotations of duty, and the occasional meals they slipped under the door for him. His hands no longer trembled. They were still, stiff, and aching. Whatever fear he had held in them plagued him no more. This galled him nearly as much as their shaking had.
What type of place was this to keep someone of his stature? He realized that he had no idea what to expect from these Romans. They might treat him with dignity if it suited them, as Hannibal instructed his generals to do with prisoners of note. They might make overtures to Carthage, using him as a negotiating point. But nothing in their behaviour so far made dignified treatment seem likely. The Romans were probably ignorant of Hannibal’s policies on dealing with prisoners. If they remembered anything, it would be the atrocities of the earlier war between the two nations, when barbarity had reached its zenith. In truth, there were no shared traditions that his captors were obliged to uphold. If they wished, they could peel the skin from his living body and douse him in vinegar and take pleasure commensurate with his pain. He simply could not predict the course ahead of him. Being hit by the full force of this reality, he recognized the truth beneath it: he had never had control of his own destiny; never had the future been certain. So in this piece of knowledge, at least, he exceeded Hannibal in wisdom.
For all of the foulness of the cell and the possible tortures awaiting him, what troubled him most was more mundane. There was no latrine in the chamber, neither a hole nor a sewage channel nor any space designated for the purpose. For the first six days he would not squat to relieve himself. He ate nothing and drank water sparingly. He swore that he would not shit until the Romans offered him a proper toilet of their own accord. This they did not do. By the third day he had to clench his buttocks tight. On the fourth day he focused in on the muscles right round his anus and scrunched them to fight the rhythmic churning power of his bowels.
When his faeces finally escaped it was in a moment of weakness, while he was drowsy and dream-racked. He found himself squatting in a corner of the cell and felt his backside open up before he even knew what he was doing. As he felt the euphoric release of the stuff curving out of him he tried to convince himself that this was an act of defiance. He was shitting on Rome, throwing his waste in their faces, soiling them. But a moment later he balled up on the other side of the cell and watched helplessly as his eyes watered over and tears spilled from them. Strange that this one thing struck him as such an indignity, but it did. It made him feel like a child without even the control of his own bodily functions. Through the wavering, dim scene before him he prayed to Baal, to El and Anath, to Moloch. The names of the gods felt dead on his tongue, but still he called on them, promising that if he lived he would inflict all manner of mayhem in their names, trying to convince himself that he was still a man who could make such promises into realities.
After a full week of complete solitude, Hanno welcomed the moment the door swung open and a Roman stepped through. At least something was now to happen, whatever it might be. The man was dressed as an officer, with a red cloak flowing down his back. He carried a lamp before him, the single flame of which cast highlights on the long, prominent muscles of his arms. He stood for a moment surveying the room, looking from Hanno around the cell, pausing on the pile of waste. Then he fixed his gaze on Hanno and spoke with haughty confidence, without pausing to ask whether the Carthaginian could understand his Latin.
‘Do you know me? I am Gnaeus Scipio, the victor in our battle. You, Barca, are the first joyful piece of news for Rome since your brother began this madness. Your failure will light fires in the hearts of my people, flames that no rain can douse, no wind extinguish. How does it feel to know you so hearten your enemies?’
Gnaeus moved closer. He bent and studied Hanno’s face. He had heavy eyebrows, bushy and chaotic, and a rounded nose that might have been broken in his youth. ‘I can see that you understand me, so don’t feign ignorance of my language. I truly mean what I am saying. You have done me a great service. When I first saw events unfolding at Hannibal’s direction I feared the worst. But when I met you on the field I was reassured. Barcas can be defeated. I know, because I’ve witnessed it. And now you know it, too. You understand that we will send you to Rome eventually, don’t you? You are, and will continue to be, a prisoner of the Roman Republic, but before you journey to my capital I will use you for a purpose or two here in Iberia. I’ve already sent word to every Iberian tribe that called you an ally. I’ve invited them all here to see you, to look upon a captured Barca and see you for what you are. Imagine the effect on them when they see you live in a tiny room, alone except for your own filth.’
Gnaeus straightened and stepped away. ‘When you do go to Rome, I cannot say how the Senate will dispose of you. To some extent that depends on yourself, and on your brothers. Think carefully on what may be possible, because your lot need not be as foul as you might fear. Hannibal will lose this war. You do not have to lose it with him. You might, actually, manage to find favour with us. You might aid us and subsequently find yourself elevated even as your brother is defeated. For example, should you choose to speak reason to the tribes and dissuade them from their allegiance to Carthage . . . Or if you open your mouth and tell us things valuable to our fight against Carthage here in Iberia . . . There are many ways you can be helpful. Need I detail them to you?’
Hanno, having grasped the thrust of the man’s comments clearly enough, answered him. ‘I will never betray my family, or Carthage.’
‘Better men than you have done just that, and no-one calls a man a fool if he succeeds while his brother perishes. How can you be sure your brothers would not sell you to save their own skins?’
‘You know nothing of us.’
The Roman considered the prisoner from a different angle, and then twisted his head away as if to indicate that he saw nothing new. ‘In any event, you have already betrayed your nation. Do your people not frown on failure as a man’s greatest sin? Perhaps I should put you on a boat bound for Carthage and let them deal with you. It’s crucifixion they favour, isn’t it? Or is it impaling?’
Hanno spat on the ground and then covered the spot with his foot. ‘I curse you and your line, your brother and your sons. May you father only girls and may all of them be whores to your enemies.’
Gnaeus smiled. He held his chin in his hand a moment and seemed to think bemusedly on the curse. ‘Is it by your own gods that you curse me? I do not fear them. And you, you should not trust them. Look at how they’ve abandoned you.’ He knocked on the door and waited for the guards to let him out. Once the door was opened he paused and addressed himself once more to Hanno. ‘Whether you like it or not, we will ask you many questions. It would behove you to answer them. If you do not, we will find which torture persuades you most forcefully. By the gods – yours or mine – I would not wish to be inside your skin in the weeks to come.’
With that he pulled the door fast behind him, leaving Hanno alone with the man’s words echoing in his head.
After the battle beside the Trebia, a howling blizzard blew in. Snow fell for two days straight. On the third a new cold crept down from the mountains. It stung exposed flesh so that men could only walk blindly, faces shrouded, stumbling towards whatever goal spurred them to move. There was little rejoicing among the men and no real mention was made of following after the ragged Roman survivors. Few even ventured out to scavenge on the battlefield. That graveyard was left to the wolves and ravens and other creatures fond of human flesh and impervious to the weather. The elephants that had travelled so far and inflicted such great damage could not withstand the relentless cold. All but one of them died within the week; this last creature, called Cyrus, was looked after with care, for now he was Vandicar’s sole ward. The chief mahout swore he would keep the creature alive to see the heat of an Italian summer.
Despite the hardships, Hannibal was pleased that they had won their first battle against Rome. Over the winter, he managed to receive several reports from spies and what they told him of events in Rome brought him pure joy. News of the defeat had travelled quickly to the capital and rocked the population’s confidence. During his first meeting with the Senate, Sempronius minimized the full extent of the tragedy and his role as the author of it. They had suffered this setback for a variety of reasons, he claimed. The rawness of so many of the troops. The bitter weather that impeded their deployment. The morale boost that the Carthaginians had fed upon after the skirmish on the Ticinus. The Trebia battle was no major defeat, he said, just an unfortunate incident.
Cornelius, arriving somewhat later, described the situation as he recalled it. He responded to the senators’ questions as flatly and simply as possible, but still each answer fell like dirt filling into his fellow consul’s grave. Among other things, he provided the most accurate estimate of the dead – more than 13,000 killed outright, more dead of infection. Questioned as to whether Sempronius had acted with gross negligence, Cornelius, surprisingly, said that he did not believe so. The events that benefited Hannibal that morning were too numerous to explain. No man could orchestrate such a thing. Perhaps only the gods could.
Nor was he the only one to arrive at this conclusion. Soon after the news of the defeat, tales began to circulate of prodigies that should have warned of the gods’ displeasure. In Sardinia, a cavalry officer’s staff had burst into flames. Some soldiers on Sicily had been struck by lightning while at exercise. At Praeneste, the rat population doubled in just a few days, and at Antium reapers swore that their hay had left traces of blood upon their blades. In more than one place it rained red-hot stones large enough to crack the skulls of the unwary. And these were not mere rumours. In each case of such an unnatural occurrence, a witness journeyed to Rome and told the story to the Senate. The Board of Ten consulted the Divine Writings, and on their recommendation the city spent much of the winter making offerings to Jupiter, to Juno, and to Minerva, conducting rites and holding public banquets like the Strewing of Couches, sacrificing pigs in Saturn’s honour.
Fine, Hannibal thought. Let them pray themselves into a frenzy.
The early spring brought the news that Servilius Geminus and Gaius Flaminius had been elected consuls. They were both charged to prosecute the war by extreme measures. They were to take control of all the routes through the Apennines and bar Hannibal’s southward progress. There were now to be two legions with each consul, another two for Rome itself, two more for Sicily, and a further legion to protect Sardinia. The two legions in Iberia were to continue their efforts there. Flaminius – a new man in the Senate and the first in his family to attain consulship – especially burned for action. He announced his plans to leave the city and commence the campaign immediately, eschewing the traditional ceremonies that would have delayed him well into the spring.
This was equally pleasant news to Hannibal. Religious fervour on one hand, arrogant impatience on the other: what more could he ask for?
In the days just preceding the first tentative signs of spring, the commander met in council after council, studying charts and interviewing scouts and debating the course ahead of them. His goal lay to the south, towards Rome and her prominent allies, but just which route to take was not easy to decide. They could march towards the east coast, take or bypass Ariminum, and roar down the Via Flaminia directly towards Rome. Another way lay across the Apennines towards the Etruscan town of Faesulae, from where they could weave their way south through several different channels, not as direct as the Flaminia, but a reasonable course that might provide them just enough forage and geographic protection to fight their way to the peninsula’s heart. Or they could attempt a crossing of the Ligurian range, difficult terrain that merited consideration only because of the possibility of resupply from the Carthaginian fleet along the Tyrrhenian coast.
As usual, the commander’s generals came to him with differing opinions and expressed them freely. Bomilcar and Mago argued for a march on Ariminum, for direct engagement with Servilius, the consul in command there: all of Italy would be open to them if they defeated him. Maharbal and Carthalo preferred some variation on the central route, a way that would suit their swift and far-ranging riders and let them fight the skirmishes they excelled at. Only Bostar favoured the difficult march towards the western coast and the benefits of meeting up with the fleet. Monomachus did not seem to think the route mattered that much; each of them led to Roman blood and that was sufficient for him.
None of the routes suited Hannibal perfectly. He wanted something more devious, more disconcerting, a way forward that would again throw the Romans into confusion. When he heard that among Maharbal’s horsemen was a man who claimed to know of just such a course, he had him brought forward at once.
The man in question joined Hannibal, Mago and Silenus in Hannibal’s tent late on a pleasantly mild morning. He entered humbly behind Maharbal, head down, eyes fixed upon the earthen floor. He was gaunt in a way that indicated he had suffered from months of poor diet. He stood like a stick figure dressed to scare birds from a field. His clothes hung off him, a collection of skins and furs piled upon each other against the cold. His hair was wild, grown long and matted. It did not flow down his back but stood out around him like a lion’s mane.
‘He is called Tusselo,’ Maharbal said. ‘He has been with us since Saguntum. He is a good rider, though I cannot say how he comes to know this land.’
‘You are Massylii?’ Hannibal asked.
Tusselo nodded.
‘Why do you know Roman geography?’
Tusselo did not raise his eyes, but his voice was steady and calm when he spoke. ‘I was a slave to the Romans. I lived twelve years in this land. My master was a merchant. We travelled much. I learned the land through walking it. Many places and the ways between them are still clear in my mind.’
‘Do you find the land different when looked upon with free eyes?’
‘Different, yes. And the same.’
‘It cannot be easy to return to the land that enslaved you, especially not for a Massylii. Your people were not put on the earth to be slaves. Do you return to seek revenge?’
The Numidian did not answer immediately. He cleared his throat and waited and made no sign that he would respond. But Hannibal let the silence linger.
‘I cannot answer you with certainty,’ Tusselo eventually said. ‘I have much anger, yes. I was robbed of many things, but not physical things that I can reclaim as such. I do want revenge, Commander, but I also want things I do not have words to explain.’
‘I will not press you to find those words,’ Hannibal said, ‘so long as there is always conviction in your actions. What is this route south that you know of?’
Tusselo explained that there was a neglected and difficult road to the north of Arretium. He pointed it out on the chart the generals had been using in their debates. It ran just south of the Arno River, through a marshy, swampy land. There was little forage on this route, the ground being so constantly soaked that only water plants flourished there. Trees had been drowned long ago and stood bare and rotting. Grass would be difficult to find. This time of the year it would be a chilly wasteland, a wide swath of country knee deep in water. The route had a single thing to recommend it, and that was that nobody would imagine they would choose it. They could emerge well into the centre of Italy, behind the armies sent to bar their passage.
‘My master once took this route to avoid the debt collectors who were hunting him,’ Tusselo said. ‘It proved a good choice. But even in the height of summer it was a wetland. It will be wetter in the spring.’
‘You still call him your master?’ Silenus asked.
Tusselo turned his gaze on him, took him in, and then looked back in Hannibal’s general direction. ‘It is just a word, the easiest for me to use. The truth is something different.’
Mago placed his fingers on the papyrus and turned it towards himself. ‘If these marshlands are as you describe they’ll be as deadly as the mountain crossing.’
‘It is the least favourable route imaginable,’ Tusselo said, ‘but if we managed it the army might pass both consuls undiscovered. We’d appear to vanish from the world in one place—’
‘—and later appear in another,’ Hannibal concluded.
Tusselo nodded. For the first time he looked directly into the commander’s eyes. ‘Like witchcraft,’ he said.
There was a silence. After a moment, Hannibal dismissed the Numidian. To Maharbal he said, ‘Do you trust this man?’
‘I don’t know how he came to us,’ Maharbal said, ‘but he has never given me reason to doubt him. I believe he knows this land. And I believe he is no friend to the Romans.’
‘I see as much in his eyes,’ Hannibal said. ‘Sometimes I wonder at the workings of the gods. I would not have found this route without this man, and yet I feel a drum beating inside me. This is part of our destiny. I must believe the gods placed him among us to make us see that which we would not have seen.’
‘Or to lead us astray,’ Mago said. ‘Not all gods look kindly on us. Brother, I do not favour defeating our cause by a march. We cannot survive another victory like the mountain crossing. I fear this will cost us too heavily.’
‘At times our fate is presented to us through unlikely vessels,’ Hannibal said. ‘I believe this Numidian is such a vessel. Why else would he return to the land that enslaved him? Even he cannot answer that question. This route is like an arrow loosed in the dark. The Romans will neither hear nor see the missile’s flight. They will simply feel the shaft as it runs deep into their chest.’
To Maharbal he said, ‘Tell this Tusselo that he rides at my side on this march. If we succeed I will be the first to credit him. If anything goes awry . . . he will learn the wrath of a new master.’
When the meeting concluded a little later, Hannibal asked Silenus to remain. Once they were alone, the commander stood and paced the room. He cleared his throat, then touched his neck with his fingers, took a fold of flesh between them, and tugged. ‘You are loyal to me, are you not?’
Silenus, uncomfortable with the tone of the question, rose and said, ‘I’ve no notion of what has been said against me, but my loyalty is complete. Has someone spoken ill of me?’
Hannibal stopped pacing. He lifted his head and turned it just enough to focus on the scribe. ‘No, no-one has spoken ill of you. The truth is, I have something to ask of you. It is a mission far beyond our agreement, but I have need of your help. It regards my brother, Hanno. I’ve just learned that his troops were badly defeated by Gnaeus Scipio. He was captured and is being held at Emporiae. You know this place, don’t you?’
Silenus lowered himself back onto his stool. Clearly, this news struck him with a heavy significance.
‘He’s been there for too long already,’ Hannibal said. ‘The news was slow in reaching me. When I imagine my brother a captive to them . . . at their mercy . . . it boils my blood as few things ever have. He must be freed. I curse myself for not learning of his capture earlier. I would offer to ransom him, but I’ve no faith the Romans would oblige me in this. Have you?’
The Greek cleared his throat. ‘It would give them great pleasure to receive that request,’ he said. ‘But no, they would not free him. I’m surprised they haven’t transported him to Rome already.’
‘He’s more use to them in Iberia. They’ve been parading him before the various tribes, degrading him, winning my allies from me by showing them a captured, powerless Barca. Someone over there understands that the unified might of Iberia – if ever harnessed – could push New Carthage into the sea, and with it everything I’ve striven for. Even so, I must assume they will send him to Rome soon, to display him yet again, but to the people of Italy. That cannot happen. Do you know a magistrate in Emporiae named Diodorus?’
The Greek nodded. ‘He’s my sister’s husband.’ After a long moment, as the two of them contemplated this, Silenus asked, ‘What would you have me do?’
Sapanibal waited for Imago Messano in her private garden, a secluded spot at the far end of the familial palace. Her chambers were less lavish than they had been at the height of her marriage to Hasdrubal the Handsome, but they suited her tastes well enough. Her sitting room extended from inside to out with hardly a boundary between the two. She sat on a stone stool beneath the shade of several massive palm trees. Water trickled down from a high, hidden cistern and ran in a tiny stream to feed the pond just behind her, rich with reeds and water lilies, home to several species of fish and a water snake that had grown fat and lazy in such bounty.
She had requested a meeting with the councillor for three reasons. One, because she knew he would be fresh from the Council and he was her best source for the things discussed there. Two, because she knew him to be utterly loyal to her family. This was something not to be taken for granted among the Carthaginian aristocracy. And third, because she found the widower’s obvious reverence for her appealing. She had not had many suitors before the politically important marriage to her late husband. Nor had she seen much interest in the years since his death. She attributed this to her strength of character, to the peculiar position of her family, to the unmatchable reputation of her brothers. And, beyond all that, she was no beauty. In the light of all these things, Imago’s interest in her was interesting to her as well.
Sapanibal did not rise when Imago appeared. For a moment – watching him walk towards her across the polished granite, his garments loose about him, flowing, his face aged just enough to transform the awkwardness of his youth into a more suitable composure – Sapanibal felt her pulse quicken. Though she promised herself she would never show it to him, this man appealed to her as few others had. She had first admired him in her girlhood, and some spark of that early devotion lingered. He was not a warrior, but he had ridden out with her father to put down the mercenary rebellion. This was no small act. That war had been one of incredible brutality. He would have known that capture by that rabble would have meant a horrible death. He had been a young man, with a considerable future ahead of him. That he put his life in danger confirmed his valour, even if his inclinations since had been of a tamer nature. He had also proved himself more recently by answering Fabius Maximus with Carthage’s acceptance of war.
‘Imago Messano,’ she said, ‘welcome. Thank you for favouring me with your presence.’
‘It is nothing,’ he said, taking a seat on the stool she indicated. ‘I am always happy to answer the call of a Barca.’
Sapanibal offered him food and refreshments. She made small talk for a few moments, asking after his health and that of his children, avoiding any mention of his late wife. But it was not long before she asked him for a report on the debate in the Council. Before he answered, Imago sipped the lime-flavoured drink a servant offered him. He closed his eyes in enjoyment of it.
‘I’ve a fondness for bitter things,’ he said. Opening his eyes, he met Sapanibal’s gaze. ‘You know, of course, what befell your brother Hanno. The Council received the news of his defeat and capture gravely. It’s no small thing to lose ten thousand men. It was quite a resounding failure, really, and it puts our hold on Iberia in grave jeopardy.’
Sapanibal felt the hair at the back of her neck lift to attention. ‘My brother had no choice, as I understand it. The Romans had landed and were welcomed at Emporiae. What would you have had him do? He fought for our interests. If the Council cared for justice they’d be negotiating for his release. Why aren’t they?’
Imago considered his answer carefully. His hands were heavily jewelled. As he thrummed his fingers in thought, the rings seemed almost some sort of armour. ‘It’s unlikely that the Romans would release a general just so that he could turn round and fight them on the morrow. That’s the only reason we’ve not pursued it. Time will provide another way.’
‘No, Hannibal will provide another way. Once he’s reinforced and sent new troops, he will once more be unconquerable. I’ve no doubt he’ll free Hanno himself.’
Imago inhaled in a way that suggested deep import. ‘Let us hope that proves so. I should tell you, though, that the Council has decided to continue sending reinforcements to Iberia, but not to Italy.’
‘Not to Hannibal?’
‘When the situation in Iberia is stabilized, Hasdrubal will be released to join your eldest brother.’
Sapanibal flicked her fingers up and showed Imago her palm. Like some snake charmer’s trick, this single motion silenced him. ‘But surely our councillors are more far-sighted than that. Our strength still lies in Hannibal! His success means the safety of Iberia. But he needs reinforcements. You will not deny him this.’
‘It is complicated, my dear,’ Imago said, smiling an invitation to leave the discussion at that.
‘As am I. Tell me what you know and I will explain what you do not understand.’
Imago considered this a moment, turned it over, finally deciding that such wit was just the thing he liked about this woman. ‘Many in the Council do not support your brother with their whole hearts,’ he said. ‘They fear that this war has put our interests in danger. Iberia was barely contained under your brother’s firm hand. With him gone, the Iberians may yet rise against us. Or – as Hanno has demonstrated – the Romans may manage to replace us there. And also they fear for Carthage itself. No-one wants to find the Romans knocking at the gates, should your brother fail.’
‘And yet Hannibal did not declare this war, did he? That oath was sworn here in Carthage, by the same tongue that speaks to me now.’
‘Well, yes, but . . . Ours are a conservative people, Sapanibal. We do not want the world. We are not like Hannibal in that. What the Council wants most is to regain the possessions that have been lost. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica. To hold Iberia—’
‘Which my family alone conquered,’ Sapanibal snapped.
Imago pursed his lips. ‘Just so. And in this lies the further problem. Few could stomach the return of a victorious Hannibal. Jealousy is stronger than reason at times. The Hannons plead peace, now as ever, but what they really fear is that your brother will achieve his goals. That result would make them rich beyond all reason – but it would make Hannibal’s fame immortal. Greatness always makes enemies, Sapanibal. The Hannons, like Hadus, hate and fear Hannibal as much as they hated and feared Hamilcar before him. I say this so that you understand that those who love your family – as I do – must move carefully in such circles.’
‘I pray you are wrong,’ Sapanibal replied. ‘My brother is the pride of Carthage. Perhaps the councillors don’t truly know him. He has been nothing but a name here for so many years. Remind them of his virtues; make them proud of him, not envious.’
‘I think that you and I have a different understanding of men’s natures.’
‘Then speak directly to the Council of Elders, the One Hundred. Invoke the memory of Hamilcar—’
This time it was Imago’s turn to silence Sapanibal with a gesture. ‘Your brother has few friends among the One Hundred,’ he said. ‘He too closely represents the glory of youth, and this is troubling to old men. Councillors are not like foot soldiers. They do not risk their lives for those they adore, nor must they put true faith in the men they elect leaders. They would rather have a hero-less victory, so that no glory shines on another. Believe me, no councillor wants to see Hannibal worshipped in such a great triumph. This they just cannot accept.’
‘And you, Imago? What can you accept?’
‘I would happily adorn your brother’s shoulders with flower petals. I would be the first to bow before him. I’ve always been a friend to your family. I was loyal to your father and supported him even when his success made him enemies.’
Sapanibal lifted her fruit drink for the first time, sipped it, and then put it down, a slight tremor in her hands. ‘I know, Imago. My father told me of your friendship. I do not doubt you, but what you report troubles me. If our councillors are already prepared to abandon my brother – when he has had nothing but hard-fought success – what will they do should he really falter?’
‘Pray that he does not falter,’ Imago said. He averted his eyes to signal a change of the subject. He asked after Didobal’s health. Sapanibal was reluctant to let the conversation drift, but she had learned much and they were both aware of it. She answered that her mother was well, as ever. Asked about her younger sister, she said the same. At first she was surprised that he would ask after a girl, but then he betrayed his real interest.
‘I understand she is fond of King Gaia’s son, Masinissa,’ Imago said. ‘But your mother has not confirmed their engagement, has she?’
Sapanibal had, in fact, spoken to her mother on this subject just the previous day, but the whole discussion had made her uneasy. It reminded her too much of the machinations that had led to her own ill-fated marriage. True enough, a union with the Massylii would bring the latter that much further under Carthage’s sway, ensuring that the king would always supply them with his gifted horsemen, but she did not wish to think of her sister’s being delivered to a man who could use or abuse her as he saw fit. Who can know what lies behind a man’s smile? She responded that Didobal thought the two in question were still quite young. There was time yet, and Didobal hoped that her eldest son would be able to bless the union in person, when he returned.
Imago smiled through all of this but responded with some gravity edging his voice. ‘I pray she does not wait too long. Hannibal may not return soon enough for this matter. Masinissa is a fine young man. He’s destined for great things. Many in the Council believe so. But there are many others who vie to wed their daughters to a son of the Massylii. Either to Masinissa, or to some other who might usurp his power. For this reason, your mother should concede promptly. We need stability along the sea coast, now more than ever. If Rome were ever to attack us here, we’d need our allies more than we like to admit. Certainly Sophonisba should stay away from the Libyan, Syphax.’
‘What has he to do with it?’
‘Did you not hear about the banquet during his last visit? Your sister danced. Hers was a brief appearance, yes, but it left the king salivating. He spent the rest of the night trying to learn all he could about her. He’s a lecher, but we can’t pretend he’s not important. I fear he’ll be the cause of trouble soon. He is eyeing King Gaia’s domain as we speak. It’s hard to see how it will all unravel, but I’m sure there is no better union for Carthage than one between Masinissa and a Barca. The prophets say the boy has a role to play in Carthage’s future. They are never wrong. Consider what I say and sound out your mother.’
Imago lifted his stool and brought it closer. He changed his tone yet again: business was concluded. ‘You are looking well, Sapanibal. I believe the sun agrees with you. Truly it is a blessing to have you so near . . .’
Never in his whole miserable life had Imco Vaca seen anything like the marshes of the Arno. He thought the mountains had been a hell of ice and rock, a horrible place worse than any other in creation. He had dreamed of those heights throughout the long winter, nightmares in which he had yet to complete the crossing. He would awake knowing that thousands of souls were trapped in the ice and might be there for ever. He thanked the gods daily that he had lived through the ordeal, and he had no plans to ever relive it in his waking hours.
That is why it seemed particularly cruel – almost a personal affront – that Hannibal chose to drive them through such sopping desolation. Imco had emerged into the spring as a sickly, paltry version of his former beauty. His body was not accustomed to months of snowy cold. He had watched in horror as a surgeon hacked off his frost-damaged finger with a serrated knife. The surgery, miraculously, did not lead to infection, but Imco believed the wound allowed malignant spirits easy entry to his body. How else did the fever creep into him? And what about the cough? Try as he might, he could not expel whatever was growing inside his chest. Nor could he stop the flow of green mucus that clogged his nasal passages. Some men managed to scavenge decent food, but Imco barely had the energy to search for sustenance. Though he ate meat cut from pack animals, he had not had a piece of fruit or a serving of anything remotely like a vegetable since the stores grabbed from Taurin.
By the spring he could see in his arms and abdomen that he had shrunk. His thighs and calves and forearms ached all day long, but not just from labour. His muscles pulsed with pain even at quiet moments. His teeth jiggled in his gums and, he was sure, his hair was falling out at an unnatural rate. His vision seemed to be disturbed as well. He could see objects clearly enough, but he had difficulty translating what his eyes saw into meaningful messages. Thus, though he noticed the horse’s rump, he did not fully comprehend how ill-placed he was behind it until the creature kicked him with a muddy hoof. Other times he misstepped and fell to his knees in the muck, not because he had not seen the object that tripped him up, but because it had not fully registered that he needed to consider its influence on his life.
By the end of the first day in the swamp, he had fully reconsidered his notions of suffering. Hell was not frozen and hard. It was wet, damp, soft. It was ankle-deep water. It was mud sucking at your feet. It was not even being able to sit down and take a moment’s rest. He should have known that something horrific was in the making when he learned of the placement of troops in the line of march. The best infantry, the Libyans, strode in the front of the line, so that the ground held firm for the first few thousand of them. Behind them came the other African troops, including Imco. Then the Iberian allies pressed through the increasingly sticky churned-up mud. In the rear of all the infantry came the Gauls. By now thousands of feet and hooves had so churned up the swamp that the men were wading and slipping through deep muck, clawing at it with their hands, struggling vainly to keep their loads from becoming soiled.
Watching them, Imco paused long enough to thank the gods for birthing him an African, for the sorry lot of the pale ones was nothing to wish for. Such was the Gauls’ misery that they would probably have deserted, each and every one of them, except that Mago and Bomilcar followed them up with the Numidian cavalry. They rode through the swamp like ill-tempered, heavily armed herdsmen, pushing the army forward no matter what. Hannibal provided no-one a choice in the matter.
It was a forlorn land; the only plants were thick, leathery grasses and reedlike tufts. Insects rose from the water and danced in swarms as big around as elephants. These seemed to appear spontaneously, deviously, so that if he glanced away for a moment Imco was likely to find himself spun in a confusion of the creatures, inhaling them and catching them in the corners of his eyes and his nose hairs. The white skeletons of long-dead trees dotted the landscape, some reaching for the sky, others lying as if they had finally given up and collapsed from fatigue. Imco had been told they were following a road. Looking through the haze of insects and mist, he saw no sign of such a thing. He had thought it before and now he could not help thinking it again: Hannibal was mad, a raving demon in a warrior’s body, a despot who revelled in the misery of those around him. He did not go so far as to share this assessment with anyone, but silently he spoke a tirade against the man.
They could not stop to camp for the night, and so they kept up a squelching, dripping progress straight through and into the dawn. By the time the sun rose again all semblance of organized marching had evaporated. Fever coursed through innumerable men. The ill and dying, the ranting and pitiful were so close around him that sometimes manoeuvring through them was like navigating a rough landscape. Imco – again thinking of spirits, as he had begun to do daily – thought he could see the contagion floating through the air from man to man, a diaphanous creature that touched the unwary with contaminated fingers. He ducked and shifted to avoid it, sometimes looking like a man swatting at bats that he could not see.
The only relatively dry spots were the corpses of pack animals. Men tried to catch moments of rest by perching on the flanks of mules and wrapping their arms around the necks of dead horses. Imco saw one man lying on two goats. It was a sorry enough sight in that there was no comfort in his posture, draped as he was across them, toes and fingers and buttocks each dipping into the muck. But it seemed even stranger when one of the goats lifted its head and stared at Imco piteously. It was not dead at all, just sunk up to its neck and disconsolate, its gaze a direct communication from beast to man. What is the point? it seemed to be asking. Imco had no answer. He just walked on. By that evening he was passing as many dead men as animals.
On the third day he caught sight of Hannibal in the distance. The commander rode behind the ears of the only living elephant. He was too far away for Imco to see his features, but others must have. Word spread that Hannibal had been infected by a fever. Some said that he had lost his sight, others that his hearing had gone as well. Strangely, Imco found this news a prod to keep him moving. If it was true, then this journey had reached heights of absurdity that he never imagined possible. Would Hannibal the Blind and Deaf lead them to the gates of Rome? He was sure the commander would try, sitting atop his elephant, barking at them, devising clever ploys that he could neither hear nor see the result of. It was too much to imagine. The more reasonable possibility was that they would soon find themselves swimming amid sharks, leaderless and cut off from home or rescue. No other general could prosecute this war with Hannibal’s determination. Without him, they would be pounced upon within a fortnight. The absurdity of this kept Imco going. He had to witness this farce played out. What a tale of woe he would have to tell in the underworld.
They had been four days and three nights in the dismal swamplands when Imco realized his feet were finding better purchase. In the afternoon of the fourth day he stepped out of the water and onto merely soggy ground. That evening he cast himself down and felt the earth’s hard contours again. And the morning of the fifth day found him looking out over a land they said was called Etruria. This time, Imco had no difficulty translating what his eyes saw to what his mind understood: rolling farmland, pastures, a rich land in the full bloom of spring. With Hannibal’s blessing they were about to plunder it to their heart’s content.
Releasing the men to pillage was more than a simple reward for them, more even than a necessary measure to revive their physical strength and morale. In fact, Hannibal needed to keep them busy while he struggled with the curse he carried from the marshes. He was not yet blind, as rumour suggested. Not deaf. But he had emerged with a raging infection in his left eye. He had never felt so malignant a force at work inside his body before. It sought to gouge the organ out and leave the hole lifeless. It ate towards the centre of him and left his very understanding of the world in disarray. Synhalus warned him that the infection could well spread, both to his other eye and beyond. The surgeon rinsed the eye often with fresh water, plastered it with salves, and nightly sprinkled it with precious drops of seawater to keep the orb moist and return it to its natural state. He had the commander drink herb teas specially designed to restore health and made him lie face down so that the evil might loosen its grip and fall from him. But none of this curbed the infection.
As important as these clinical measures were Mandarbal’s services. Hannibal knew the priest had been feeling slighted since the campaign began. Though he offered sacrifices at the beginning of each stage of the journey and read portents often among the Libyan and Numidian troops, Hannibal had not consulted him in military matters. Why ask for an opinion he might not wish to accept? With the mark of the divine to give them weight, the grim proclamations Mandarbal enjoyed making could hamper his efforts. And yet Hannibal did request that he intercede with the gods concerning his health. Mandarbal led sessions of prayer and sacrifice, calling upon the gods to drive the illness back to wherever it had sprung from. He slit the necks of three goats, a young, unblemished calf, and a mature bull, offering them up to the deities he believed responsible. All to no effect.
In his own mind, Hannibal knew that there was no mystery concerning whence the illness had sprung. He had felt it leap up from the sodden ground beneath his mount’s feet. A single drop of mud stuck to the edge of his eye. He had rubbed at it absently. A grain of the dirt bit into him, slipped round his eyeball and into cover, where it slowly went to work. He had not been the same since. The fluctuations in temperature had not helped. Nor had the constant moisture, the insects, the fevers, the smell of death in the air.
It was not that the march had been any worse than he had anticipated. He looked around at scenes he might have imagined beforehand. The death rate did not surprise him. The losses were at the extreme edge of what he thought possible, but Hannibal was rarely mistaken in his understanding of mortality. It was the fact that he had been personally struck that troubled him. He recalled that only a few years ago he had stood almost unblemished before Imilce, and he remembered once joking with Sapanibal that no simple cold, nothing so mundane, could ever harm him. Now the tissue of his leg bore the scars of that Saguntine spear; his body had failed to fight off the ill spirits transmitted through cold; his very eyes no longer perceived the world completely. He felt the bite of his own arrogance. Some, viewing his accomplishments from a distance, might think that he drove Fortune before him like a mule before the lash. It suited him that they thought this, of course, but he knew the dance between him and the Fates was more precarious than that.
The afternoon after emerging from the marshes he held a council. Throughout it, Mago stared at him in sullen amazement. He hardly uttered a word during the meeting, but as it closed he indicated that he would speak to his brother in private. Alone, he wasted no time in voicing his mind.
‘How could this happen to you?’ he asked. ‘You are nearly blinded! I can see even now that you only half perceive me. This is all the fault of that Numidian. We should take his eyes for the evil he has done you. Hannibal, surely we can reverse this. You must fight it more forcefully. Have you not heard Mandarbal’s proposal? He believes a human sacrifice might appease the god who’s afflicted you.’
Noting the fear in his brother’s face, Hannibal found his answer coming automatically. He knew how he should respond, and realizing it he also understood that he had been too long wrestling with the same doubts himself. He smiled. Unwittingly, Mago had prompted Hannibal to remember himself.
He said, ‘Our soldiers kill in our names daily. If a human sacrifice were the cure for this, then I would be immortal by now. No, it would seem that Hannibal cannot take his wounds as a commander should.’
‘But this is no wound! No spear did this to you! It is a curse brought down from—’
Hannibal shook his head. ‘Listen. You have heard of the general Bagora, yes? There is a tale Father told me about him. I’ve never heard it repeated, but Father believed it to be true. One of Bagora’s captains, a brave fighter, was skilled with the spear and famous for his overhand thrust. He was a hero of the early wars with the Libyans, gifted in violence even before he’d taken a woman. But one day, while he worked his damage, he stepped over a man he believed to be dead. The man was not dead, though. He reached up and sliced the hero’s spear hand clean off. The captain healed quickly enough, but without that hand he was no longer himself. He refused to resume his post, refused even to aid in training recruits. When summoned to explain himself to his general the young man complained that he was useless. He could not hold his spear! The gods had betrayed him, he who had only striven to honour them. Without another word, Bagora drew his sword and sliced off the soldier’s other hand. The hero dropped to his knees and begged to understand. Do you know how Bagora answered?’
Mago shook his head.
‘He said, “You are useless to me now. But not because you lack one hand, nor because you lack two. You became useless the moment you called yourself useless, when you failed to realize that the gods despise self-pity.”’
Hannibal cleared his throat and raised his chin. After a moment of silence, he said, ‘Mago, I will not be despised by the gods. Let this be the last time I hear you bemoan damage to the body – mine or yours. There should be no such weakness in either of us. Thank you for reminding me of this.’
The second morning in the dry lands of Etruria, scouts returned with word that the Roman forces under Flaminius were encamped near the city of Arretium. This meant that time was short. Word of the Carthaginian presence would reach the consul in days, if it had not already. As he pondered their next move, Hannibal thought of Tusselo. The Numidian had ridden beside him through the marshes. They had exchanged few words, for the route was as Tusselo had described and Hannibal’s mind had been otherwise occupied, but now he felt a need to speak to him.
When Tusselo stepped through the open door of the tent, Hannibal acknowledged him by clearing his throat. He had just dabbed at the fluid oozing from his eye; his fingers were dripping with a pungent yellow liquid. He had seen all sorts of fluids emanate from men’s bodies over the years. This substance, he knew, had no place issuing from the eyes. He wiped his fingers clean on his tunic.
‘You have lost me half my vision,’ Hannibal said.
Tusselo did not dispute this. ‘If I could carve out my eye and give it you, I would.’
‘My surgeon is skilled, but not gifted enough for such a transaction. You make a tempting offer, though. My brother thinks I should have your eye as a tribute. I could wear it round my neck as a reminder that my powers of retribution are equal to whatever force did this to me.’
Hannibal let the threat sit for a long time.
Tusselo finally said, ‘You may have my eye for that as well, if you choose.’
‘Hannibal does not inflict damage simply to sate his own vanity. The truth is, I thank you for the path you showed us. I am now where I wanted to be. Italy is before us, her armies behind – just as you said. Come, sit here and look on this map.’
He motioned the Numidian to a stool on the other side of the small table before him. As directed, Tusselo gazed at the chart of Italy. His light brown eyes drifted over the lines and pictures for some time, but when he looked up his face showed little comprehension. ‘This is different from the land that lives in my mind,’ he said.
‘Then shape the map in your mind into words and lay it before me. I wish to find a trap hidden in the land. Help me with this and you will make your life one I value.’
The Numidian barely hesitated. He opened his mouth and began speaking. The words came out smooth and even, as if he had actually rehearsed them for this moment. Hannibal sat back and closed his eyes and realized that the view of the world thrown against the back of his eyelids was not dimmed by the infection. It was still possible to see clearly. He listened to the African speak for some time, learning the land in a way that all of his previous chart study had not approached.
That evening his physician came to him and after a long examination confirmed what Hannibal already knew: his eye was dead. For ever after, he would see the world through a single lens only. So be it, he thought. Knowing this, he felt there was no need to delay. Starting the next day, the army moved in a herd of flaming destruction. He turned them away from the Roman legions at Arretium and marched upon Faesulae, a fortified town which they took by the sword. They ravished it: the men killed, the women brutalized, the children kicked fleeing into the hills. They took what they could carry, torched the rest, and marched southward, repeating the pattern as they went. Their wake was a blackened wasteland of despair. On this march, Hannibal showed no mercy. It would take a hundred thousand deaths to end this war, so he might as well increase the count daily. It was therefore up to the Romans to acknowledge his supremacy and call the bloodshed to a halt.
As he passed Cortona, Hannibal’s scouts brought him the news he had hoped for. Flaminius was behind him. His army pursued them at a headlong run, heedless that they were not chasing a quarry at all. They were being baited.
Since he was nearer the western coast than the eastern, Silenus sailed from a nameless village port on the coast downstream from the city of Asculum. The entire journey was to take place clandestinely, with no mention of a Carthaginian cause and no use of an African vessel. The latter would make the journey time-consuming, but it was deemed best. The Romans, never sea-lovers, had of late gained some naval mastery. Silenus could not afford to be aboard a ship that might be targeted for attack.
Despite his secrecy he was stopped three times by random Roman patrols. The first time, Silenus claimed to be a merchant from Heraclea, plying his trade in leather goods along the Adriatic coast. Asked if this were not a risky undertaking, considering the war, he answered that he had complete confidence that Rome would vanquish the African foe soon enough, after which the fruits of his intrepid labour would richly reward him. When he produced samples of his wares and offered a sales pitch, he was soon released.
The second time, at the port of Syracuse, he named no concrete purpose to his life but simply wagged his tongue evasively during questioning. As he had grown to manhood in the city, he spoke with inflections that marked him as a native. The soldiers dismissed him for a nuisance, not a threat. Thereafter he stood for some time staring up at the city. It was – as ever – a wonder to look upon, an architectural marvel, a museum housing much of the world’s knowledge and artwork. He longed to take a few hours away from his mission and climb up into the familiar environs, to look out over the views he loved and to search out old friends and share with them tales of the things he had seen in the last few years. He wanted the company of Greek men so much that he felt the desire for them deep inside his abdomen. Looking up at the accomplishments of Greek minds and labours, he wondered why he had so tied his life to the fortunes of another race. Maybe he had been foolish.
As he stood thinking this, word came to him of a ship that would take him on to Emporiae, embarking that very afternoon. He turned to the man who brought him the news and asked how to find the vessel. He did not think the action through fully, but simply carried on with his mission. The prompting, defying all else, was of a personal nature. Though he had said nothing of it to Hannibal, the news of Hanno’s capture had rocked him. To imagine any Barca in Roman custody was shocking enough, but this one he had a particular fondness for. It was hard for him to explain, even to himself, but he had always found something endearing in the traits others might call Hanno’s faults. Hanno’s taciturn nature brought Silenus a new pleasure in his own mirth. Hanno’s superstitious fear of signs and symbols in the world made him smile at his own irreverence. Never had he met a person who took life so seriously, who stood so near to greatness and got less joy from it. Hanno was not impressive in the manly way of Hannibal, nor strikingly handsome like Hasdrubal, nor good-natured like Mago, but Silenus could not help himself. He liked the taciturn soldier best of all, and wished very much for a future in which they had the leisure to work out the nature and depth of their relationship.
There could be no sight more offensive to Roman eyes than the horizon-wide view of farmland and villages burning under an invader’s torch. Flaminius could scarcely believe the visions that assaulted his eyes as he pursued the Carthaginian army through Etruria. How had they appeared south of him, out of nowhere? The news sent him reeling with amazement. Somehow, Hannibal had already bested him. In his first move, he had slipped by without so much as a skirmish. Anger followed fast on shock, and Flaminius wasted no time in striking camp and setting the full two legions in pursuit.
And a strange pursuit it was. If Hannibal had been invisible a moment before, now he chose to leave signs of his passing in the air and on the land and written on people’s faces. Smoke billowed up into the sky from a thousand different fires. Even among the Roman officers there were whispers that this invader was blessed by some new gods and could not be stopped. It was a foolish rumour, but a seed of doubt had sprouted within them. Flaminius decided to check this before it grew into outright fear.
One evening he had a great fire kindled. He stood with his back to it, stared into the red faces of his men, and harangued them at length. Could they not see that this invasion was a new version of the first barbarian wave? The first time Romans had come face to face with Gauls, they believed the brutes were divine warriors, sent to herald the end of the world as Rome knew it. Those yellow-haired monsters strode out of the north, a horde of giants, invincible, bone-crushing. The Romans who met them were so frightened they turned and ran. The Gauls found Rome an empty city, save for the Capitol, which a few soldiers held with their lives. They had plundered the land just as Hannibal was doing now, undisciplined, bestial.
‘And yet here we are,’ Flaminius said, ‘generations later, rulers of all of Italy, branching out into the world. How is that possible? Because of the fortitude of a single man. A single citizen reversed the tide of Fate. That man was Camillus, as great a man as Cincinnatus. Camillus loathed these barbarians. He said, “Look at them. They’re not gods. Not demons. They’re not harbingers of change. They’re men like us, except beneath us. They have no discipline. They sleep in the open. They erect no fortifications. They gorge themselves on food and wine and women and collapse upon the ground.” Camillus saw them for what they truly were, and he taught the others how to vanquish them. With a corps of picked men he stole into their sprawling camp one night, walked quietly through their snoring masses until his men were everywhere among them. Then they fell upon the Gauls. They slit their throats and left them gasping, waking from their drunken dreams to see the face of hell.’
Flaminius raised his hands out to either side, embracing the whole company before him, in silhouette with the fire bright behind him. ‘Never since that night has a Roman feared a barbarian. Let us not forget the teachings of our ancestors. We are Rome; we fear not these invaders. We’ve only to stay true to ourselves to triumph.’
At the morning meal the next day, scouts reported that Hannibal was heading towards Perusia, from which he would, presumably, make a dash for the south. Hearing this, Flaminius rejoiced. He could not have had better news. Little did Hannibal know that he would soon find himself trapped between two consular armies: Flaminius’ own and that of Geminus, who even then was marching south in haste. It was perfect. The gods were with him. If he had his way, he would sever Hannibal’s head from the body that bore it and carry it aloft on a spear. Rome would greet him with a triumphal welcome of unprecedented proportions.
In haste, both from impatience and also to demonstrate his determination to those around him, Flaminius left his breakfast half eaten. He rose and hurried towards his horse, shouting out orders to the officers who scrambled to keep up with him. They must quicken the pace of march. At the same time, they would send word to Geminus and ask him for cavalry reinforcement. It just might be possible to pinch the enemy between the full weight of both their armies. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘by the gods we’ll have them all.’
Having spoken thus, he attempted to mount his horse with similar conviction. He leaped directly from the ground. The move began sharply enough, with some of the grace of a mounted entertainer. Some of it, but not all. The horse skittered, backed, and then reared as the consul sought purchase. It spun in a tight circle and yanked the reins from the rider’s hands. This flurry of motion ended in stillness: the horse standing a few paces away, calm and instantly undisturbed, the consul on his backside in the mud, gazing at his stained garments as if completely mystified by this outcome. It was an ill omen if ever there was one, but Flaminius swatted at the hands that offered him aid.
‘Just a mishap!’ he snapped. ‘Has no-one ever fallen from a horse before me?’
Then, as if he had not already enough prods to rage, a report came that one of the standard-bearers could not pull his burden up from the ground. Before the gaze of astonished onlookers who were reluctant to touch the pole themselves, the young man strained and groaned and tired himself with the effort. True enough that the ground was damp, yielding stuff, but its grip on the shaft seemed unnatural to all onlookers, as if the earth itself wished to delay them.
Flaminius, however, tilted his gaze skyward and asked the heavens if ever a consul had led an army less inclined to action. He ordered the standard dug out of the ground and called for the march to begin. Omens be damned; the consul was determined to make contact with the enemy and bring him to a full test. And so he would, three days later, beside a lake called Trasimene.
A year ago, Aradna would not have imagined that she and her donkey would still be following the Carthaginians, but come the spring she had to set aside her plans of escape. Though she still had her treasure tied and snug between her breasts, it did not seem like enough. And also she had come together with the remnant band of camp followers over the long winter. They had aided one another by pooling their food and foraging in bands, although scavenging items of value was still a solitary, secretive pursuit. They were several groups – some composed entirely of Gallic women attending their husbands – of which hers was the smallest, fifteen in total. Even this modest number provided some measure of security above travelling alone. It was a mixed company of men and women, young and old. She managed to fend off the attentions of the men and live with them peaceably. And, better yet, she had come up with a proposal that had bettered their lot and won credit for it.
Like any army’s livestock, the Carthaginians’ had to be transported alive and afoot. There had once been a horde of slaves and servants and ambitious boys to attend to this, but their numbers had dwindled. Many of those still living were recruited as soldiers, now that every willing man – and some not willing – was needed. Why not let the followers aid in herding the beasts? Aradna passed this proposal to Hannibal’s secretary through the large Celtiberian who thought himself their leader. The Carthaginian, Bostar she believed his name was, had agreed, and so the ragged followers became sheep and goat and cow herders. They got no pay for their labour except the poor portions of the slaughtered animals, but that was no small thing. And, of course, it placed them in a prime position to scavenge should a great battle soon reward them.
The evening that the army marched through the defile and down into the valley of the lake, Aradna believed that the time had come. No-one thought to consult with or give directions to the followers, but they judged the signs for themselves and reacted to them. She and the others herded the few surviving goats and steers onto a high, grassy knoll. From it they had a vantage point that encompassed the entire valley below. The lower elevations were just slipping into shadow, but the air above seemed to suspend particles of the sun’s amber vibrancy. The shore of the lake curved in a wide, irregular arch that slipped out of and then back into view. Beside it stretched a relatively flat expanse. This soon tilted and rose to a gradual, undulating slope dotted with trees and low vegetation. A little higher, the incline increased, leading up the rocky mountain ridge that hemmed in that side of the valley completely. The only easy access to the lakeside came from the narrow defile through which they had passed and from another similar gap at the far end. An army entering the field would have to march thinly through the pass, spread over a distance, with little room to move on either side until well down onto the flats.
The main contingent of Hannibal’s infantry took up a position in the centre of the far end of the plain, as if they were preparing to meet the Romans in a traditional combat on the mom. But the plain itself was not wide enough for the two armies to march towards each other in battle formation. Aradna recognized that the troop movements before her were made with guile. Units of cavalry took up positions near the mouth of the defile, on fairly open ground, but hidden behind the hills and ridges that marked that area. Slingers and light infantrymen were deployed in small groups along the whole length of the plain. They moved up towards the hills and slipped between the folds of earth there. Within a short time they had all but disappeared.
Aradna waited through the night, plagued by a nervous energy. She stared up at the stars, low-hung and gentle, near enough to touch if she had had the desire to disturb them. She wondered whether it was true that the lights floating up there were the souls of the departed. An old woman had told her so once, but she knew not whether this came from any particular doctrine. Her father might be up there. She tried to pick him out, but there were so many and they were so similar. If the old woman had spoken truly, then each night would see new stars born. The night would soon glow brighter than the day.
She did not intentionally drift to sleep, but upon waking she realized she had slept hard and she knew she had been awakened by something. She was damp with the night cool and felt the chill touch of a moist vapour slipping over her. The sky above was white with high cloud. The stars had retreated to wherever they passed the daylight hours. She took this in while still in the hold of a dreamy half-consciousness, but then she heard again the sound that had stirred her, a throbbing conducted through the earth beneath her. It took her a moment to place it – the rhythmic stamp of feet over the ground. She jumped up and, calling to the others, ran to the viewing point. The sight before her both surprised and exasperated her.
What had been a wide sweep of lakeside and a perfect view of the plains the day before was now hidden beneath a blanket of low fog. In the higher reaches, only stray bands of white vapour clung to a few hollows, but the rest of the valley was completely shrouded. She could, however, see the opening in the mountains through which the Roman army marched. They must have broken camp before the dawn to reach this point so early. They kept to a tight formation, moving in ordered lines, so disciplined that even their steps fell in unison. Looking towards the other end of the plain Aradna could just make out the movements of the main body of Hannibal’s infantry. It was hard to know whether the Romans would have been able to see them. But whether they did or not, they marched on at full pace. She watched the whole column until the straggling ends of the army slipped down into the mist.
Aradna could only guess at what followed from things she heard. She imagined the Carthaginian army silent and hiding, listening to the very tramp of Roman feet that had woken her. They waited, waited, waited. And then a scream broke the hush, from a single voice, two tones that hung in the air for a long moment. Next came a Gallic horn blast. Then the roar of thousands of voices merging in a similar purpose. She imagined the Carthaginians breaking from cover and sweeping down upon all sections of the Roman line. Though barely able to see, they must have run forward by whatever route they had chosen the previous evening. To the Romans their enemy would first have been a wall of sound, suddenly surging from a blank place that had moments before been silence. The Romans would not have had time to draw their weapons. Certainly not time to form ranks and receive instructions. When the Carthaginian forces materialized, they must have seemed like demons stepping out of the unknown, slashing and stabbing, sending missiles slicing through moist air.
‘What god works here today?’
The voice that asked this question surprised Aradna. For a moment she had forgotten her companions, but then she recognized the voice as that of an older woman she had first met in the winter, one rarely impressed by anything. It was not a question meant to be answered, and no-one tried. They kept their ears open to the valley below. Despite the yell of voices and clash of weapons and bellow of horns, the symphony of the combat was strangely muted. Aradna knew war as well as any soldier and therefore knew that the work of men slaughtering each other was punctuated as much by silence as by noise. Flesh makes no cry when it is pierced. Limbs lopped off and dropped to the ground barely make a thud. Men slipping in blood and tangled in entrails are unlikely to project any reasoned, measured complaint. A slung iron pellet squelches into flesh, a sound no louder than that of a pebble dropped into still water.
Because Aradna knew this, she listened with all of her being tuned to her ears. She listened for some indication that the Romans had managed to regroup, but there was nothing in the confusion to indicate this. According to her ears, the Romans were being carved to pieces. She could envision it no other way, even though her knowledge of the world whispered that this was not possible. Rome’s soldiers were not supposed to die so easily. Hannibal had massacred them once already. But a second time in as many encounters?
She could not have guessed how much time passed like this. At some point, the very earth shook. The woman next to her grabbed her arm and the two of them waited it out together, both wondering if even that was something orchestrated by Hannibal, hearts beating faster for the possibility that he truly had some divine power working with him. When patches of the mist cleared, a wide stretch of the lake emerged, materializing with a sudden, disconcerting solidity. There was a disturbance in the water. It seemed that a great school of fish churned the surface at many places. Strange as the whole morning had been, Aradna half believed that some creatures from the marine world were rising to comment on the battle, whether in praise or anger she knew not.
It took only a moment to understand the reality. It was the splash of soldiers rushing into the water, the slash of their arms and frantic kick of their legs. The Romans were fleeing. In their haste they threw off their helmets and flung away weapons and even tried to yank off armour that impeded them. Numidian and Celtiberian horsemen churned through the water behind them, slashing at the backs of men’s heads, splitting them open like hard-shelled fruit, spearing their bodies as fishermen would. Eventually, even the most distant swimmers had to turn back. The far shore was beyond their reach, and few found the courage to drown themselves. As they neared the shore they were cut down one and all by the cavalry, creating a red stain so dark it blackened the whole shoreline of the lake. When the mist peeled away further, revealing the plain, Aradna caught her first full sight of the carnage. It was worse even than she had imagined.
Though she was no longer squeamish about violent death, Aradna turned her back on the scene and lowered herself to the turf. She had long ago learned something of the art of war, but of late she had found Hannibal a teacher of an altogether different sort. Sitting there, slowly taking in what she had seen, Aradna had a thought she had not previously considered. Hannibal just might do it. He just might win this war. Rome could not produce new soldiers for slaughter for ever. They could not raise new generations of leaders overnight. They could not feed a thronging, hostile army on their own soil indefinitely. Through all her travels she had thought mostly of herself and her path back to her homeland. She had not really cared about or given much thought to the success of the war. Now, for the first time, she realized its outcome might well affect the course of her life, no matter in what quiet corner she searched for solace. This man, with his genius for death, just might change the world.